Jury service and public duties leave in Australia
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Jury service and public duties leave in Australia is a legal obligation for employers — you must release employees to attend, and in most cases you cannot dismiss or disadvantage them for doing so. The practical obligations, particularly around pay, vary by state and territory.
What the law requires
Jury service and public duties leave sit within both federal and state/territory law. At the federal level, the Fair Work Act prohibits adverse action against an employee because they are absent on jury service. Dismissing, threatening, or penalising an employee for attending jury duty is unlawful.
The National Employment Standards do not specify a paid leave entitlement for jury service, but they do provide a general protection for community service leave. Under the NES, employees are entitled to take leave for jury service and certain eligible community service activities. Unpaid community service leave applies broadly; however, for jury service specifically, the NES requires that you pay an employee their base rate of pay for the first ten days of jury service (for regular, non-casual employees). After those ten days, the leave continues but without the payment obligation under the NES.
Casual employees are not entitled to the paid portion.
State and territory obligations on top of the NES
State and territory jury Acts layer additional obligations over the NES floor. Some jurisdictions require courts to pay jurors an attendance fee, and some state laws require employers to top up the difference between the court's fee and the employee's normal pay — or simply require employers to maintain full pay regardless of what the court pays. Requirements differ between New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Tasmania, the ACT and the Northern Territory.
Because these rules change and interact with the federal floor, your practical step is to check the jury Act in whichever state or territory the employee's court is located. If your state law is more generous than the NES, the more generous rule applies.
Where a business has employees across multiple jurisdictions, the relevant law is the one where the employee is actually serving — not where the business is headquartered.
How to handle pay and payroll during jury service
For the NES-paid period, continue running the employee's base rate of pay through your normal payroll cycle. "Base rate" means their ordinary hourly rate, excluding overtime, penalties, allowances and loadings. It does not mean their full package.
A few practical points:
- Keep STP reporting current. Payments made during jury service are ordinary wages. Report them through Single Touch Payroll at each pay event as you normally would. There is no special payment category for jury service pay.
- Don't offset the court's attendance fee automatically. Whether you can reduce your payment by the amount the court pays depends on your state's law and the employee's award or enterprise agreement. Check before making any offset.
- Check the award or agreement. Many modern awards and enterprise agreements include jury service provisions that are more generous than the NES minimum — for instance, a longer paid period or continued payment for all jury service days regardless of length. Those conditions prevail.
- Superannuation. Jury service pay is ordinary time earnings, so the Superannuation Guarantee applies in the usual way. From 2026, the rate is 12% of ordinary time earnings.
What "public duties" leave covers
Beyond jury service, employees may request leave for other community service activities. The NES covers "eligible community service activities," which includes voluntary emergency management activities — for example, a volunteer firefighter responding to a declared emergency. This leave is unpaid under the NES, though again an award or agreement may provide something better.
Other forms of public duty — local government service, board appointments, electoral officer roles — are not covered by the NES as a standalone entitlement. Whether you must grant leave, and on what terms, depends on:
- Your award or enterprise agreement
- Any relevant state legislation (some states have provisions for witnesses and public officeholders)
- Your own workplace policies
It is good practice to have a written policy that addresses these situations, sets out the process for notifying you, and explains what documentation you expect (a jury summons, an employer's letter from the relevant body, and so on).
Managing the absence in practice
Give the employee a simple process: notify their manager as soon as they receive a summons, provide a copy of the summons, and keep you updated as the jury service extends. Long trials are uncommon but do happen, and an employee may not know at the outset whether they will serve for three days or three months.
You cannot require the employee to use annual leave for jury service. They are entitled to community service leave separately. Keep records of the absence and the payments made, as you would for any leave type — those records may be needed if a dispute arises.
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