Employment law changes 2026: what Australian employers need to know

2026 is one of the busiest years for workplace law reform in recent memory. If you only read one section, make it payday super — it changes how you run every pay cycle. Connected rostering and payroll software makes most of these changes far easier to absorb, because accurate hours feed accurate pay and super automatically.

This is the change with the widest reach because it touches every employer and every pay run. From 1 July 2026, the quarterly super model ends. You must pay super guarantee contributions for each payday, and the money must be received by the employee’s fund within seven business days of payday. The 12% SG rate does not change — only the timing and the way contributions are calculated.

Super is now calculated on a new measure called qualifying earnings, which brings together ordinary time earnings and certain other payments. The ATO’s Small Business Superannuation Clearing House is also closing, so affected employers need an alternative SuperStream-compliant solution before 1 July.

From 1 July 2026, government Paid Parental Leave increases to 130 days (26 weeks) for children born or adopted on or after that date, up from 120 days (24 weeks). The payment is still made at the national minimum wage rate, and it now attracts 12% superannuation paid by the ATO.

The bigger structural change is shared care. For couples, 20 days (4 weeks) are reserved for each parent on a use-it-or-lose-it basis — if one parent does not take their reserved days, those days are lost rather than transferred. Single parents can access the full 130 days, and couples can take up to 20 days of leave concurrently.

The payment is funded by Services Australia, not the employer, but you still administer the request, plan coverage, and manage the return to work. One detail worth flagging to staff: if they lodge a pre-birth claim before 1 July 2026, their balance starts at 120 days and Services Australia adds the extra 10 days once they provide proof the child arrived on or after 1 July.

The Fair Work Commission’s 2026/27 annual wage review lifts all modern award minimum rates by 4.75% from the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, and raises the national minimum wage to $26.44/hr ($1,004.90/week). Any classification that would still fall below the new floor is automatically lifted to it.

Missing the effective date is an underpayment, so the rates need to be in your system before the first July pay run. Businesses using award interpretation software get the increase applied automatically once the official pay guides are published. The full detail, including the casual loading numbers and the extra aged-care increases from 1 August, is in the award rate changes guide, and our free wage growth & award trends e-guide tracks the longer-term trend.

Under the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) framework, employers with 500 or more employees must select three gender equality targets — at least one of them numeric — from a prescribed menu when they lodge their Gender Equality Report in the April–May 2026 window. They then have a three-year cycle to meet or show improvement against each target, or risk being publicly named by WGEA.

Most small and mid-sized businesses sit below the 500-employee threshold and aren’t directly captured. But the direction of travel is clear, and the underlying expectation — measurable, documented progress on pay equity and workforce composition — is worth getting ahead of regardless of headcount.

Flexible work is one of the fastest-moving areas of employment law in 2026, and it’s the change small and mid-sized employers are most likely to field questions about day to day. The categories of employee who can make a formal flexible-work request under the National Employment Standards continue to include parents and carers of school-age or younger children, pregnant employees, employees aged 55 and over, people with a disability, registered carers, and those experiencing or supporting someone affected by family and domestic violence — generally after 12 months’ continuous service (or 12 months of regular work for a casual).

Requests can cover changes to hours, work patterns (such as job-sharing or split shifts) and location, including remote or work-from-home arrangements. State-level reform is pushing this further: Victoria has flagged a proposed right to work from home at least two days a week where the role allows, phased in for larger businesses first and with exclusions for sectors such as retail, hospitality, healthcare, manufacturing and construction. It isn’t national law, but it signals where expectations are heading.

The practical point for employers: requests must be assessed on their individual merits through genuine consultation, and a refusal has to rest on reasonable business grounds that you can document — blanket “no WFH” policies won’t satisfy the test. See how to respond to flexible work requests correctly, and share our guide to requesting flexible work with staff so requests arrive in a form you can process cleanly.

Several changes aren’t fully in force yet but should shape your planning:

• Non-compete ban (proposed 2027): the government plans to ban non-compete clauses for low- and middle-income workers. Audit your employment contract clauses now and lean on confidentiality and non-solicitation terms instead of broad restraints.
• NDA restrictions on sexual harassment settlements: Victoria has passed reforms limiting non-disclosure agreements in workplace sexual harassment matters, with commencement expected around 1 July 2026. Where they apply, an NDA generally can’t be used unless the complainant requests it, and information-statement and review-period safeguards apply. Employers nationally should review how they handle these settlements.
• Redundancy and redeployment: recent case law expects broader redeployment analysis across the whole organisation before a redundancy is finalised, with the consideration documented.
• National Employment Standards review: a parliamentary inquiry is examining the adequacy of the National Employment Standards — no change yet, but potential reform to core minimum conditions down the track.
• Tighter payroll compliance: set-off clauses can’t retrospectively balance award entitlements, so accurate records and defensible pay calculations matter more than ever.