Paid reproductive leave: what the NES inquiry is weighing

A federal inquiry into Australia’s National Employment Standards is currently weighing whether reproductive health should be explicitly named in the minimum floor of workplace entitlements. The proposal: at least 10 days of paid reproductive leave per year, non-cumulative, covering miscarriage, menstrual conditions, endometriosis flares, fertility treatment and menopause. Recommendations are expected before the end of 2026.

If you have ever come in to work through a painful period and said nothing, or taken personal sick leave for a miscarriage and listed something else as the cause, you are not unusual. The review exists because this is a pattern, not an exception — and because that pattern has a measurable cost.

The conditions behind the inquiry

The National Employment Standards set the minimum conditions every Australian worker is entitled to: annual leave, personal sick leave, parental leave, compassionate leave, flexible work arrangements. Reproductive health has never been named explicitly within that framework, which means it has been absorbed — silently — into existing sick leave categories or simply not absorbed at all.

Modelling by the Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, commissioned by a group of Australian unions, estimates that reproductive health conditions cost the Australian economy $21.3 billion a year in direct absences and reduced output from people working through symptoms. What that figure traces is not mainly absenteeism — it is the cost of presenteeism, of people in pain who are technically at work but not fully there.

The conditions driving that cost are common and under-recognised. Endometriosis affects approximately one in nine Australian women and is associated with cyclical and acyclical pelvic pain that commonly spans the entire working life. Perimenopause typically begins in the mid-forties and involves disrupted sleep, heat dysregulation, cognitive changes and irregular bleeding — symptoms that are almost universally undisclosed at work. Miscarriage occurs in approximately one in five recognised pregnancies and is rarely acknowledged as warranting recovery beyond a day or two, if anything at all.

What these conditions share is not their physiology but their visibility at work: near zero. The inquiry is asking whether the legal framework is partly responsible for that invisibility.

Both-and: the case and the complications

The case for reproductive leave rests on an equity argument. Conditions that disproportionately affect women have been structurally invisible in leave systems designed around a historically male working pattern. Spain became the first European country to introduce paid menstrual leave in 2023; Japan has had menstrual leave provisions since 1947, though not universally paid; Indonesia, South Korea and several Mexican states have also moved. Australia’s federal entitlements have not kept pace.

Within Australia, the Queensland public sector has moved. The state government introduced 10 days of paid reproductive leave through enterprise bargaining in 2024, covering about 320,000 public sector workers. Jacqueline King, general secretary of the Queensland Council of Unions, said the agreement opened conversations about “real-life issues” that had previously gone unspoken. The scale of the Queensland rollout is the closest thing Australia has to a live pilot.

The case for caution focuses on smaller employers. Liam Jones of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry argued that many small businesses “simply can’t absorb the extra cost” and favours workplace flexibility over new leave entitlements. That concern is not abstract. A two-GP practice, a small allied health clinic, or a sole-trader business has a fundamentally different capacity to absorb mandatory leave than a state government department or a large corporate employer. Flexibility — schedule control, remote work, modified duties — can achieve similar practical outcomes in settings where a new leave category creates administrative burden.

But there is a third layer that neither argument fully addresses. A graphic designer who spoke to ABC Health described taking only two days off after a miscarriage at 13 weeks, and said she would rather invent another reason than take leave for period pain: “I still feel there’s guilt and a stigma around using period pain as an excuse.”

A legislative entitlement does two things: it creates a right, and it creates a category — a formal signal that the condition is real, the need is legitimate, and the workplace is obliged to respond. Whether that shifts the cultural conversation or simply adds a formal leave type that most people still won’t use is an open question. The Queensland evidence suggests the former is possible, but it did not happen automatically.

2 cents

No federal entitlement has changed yet. The review’s recommendations are expected later in 2026; any government response and legislative change would follow. This is not an announcement of new leave rights — it is a live policy debate with a serious evidence base and a domestic precedent behind it.

Two practical notes for right now:

First, existing personal sick leave can already be used for any personal illness or injury, including menstrual conditions and pregnancy-related illness, without disclosing the specific diagnosis. Under the National Employment Standards, an employee can take paid personal sick leave when they are not fit for work due to personal illness or injury. A medical certificate documenting reduced work capacity is sufficient documentation; the diagnosis itself does not have to be disclosed. If reproductive health conditions are currently affecting your work capacity, a conversation with your GP about appropriate documentation is worth having.

Second, if your workplace or enterprise agreement already offers reproductive leave — as Queensland’s public sector now does — that entitlement may exist independently of any future federal change. It is worth checking your enterprise agreement or employment contract.

Verdict: maybe — the evidence base is strong, the timeline and final scope are still open.

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Sources cited

1. Should every Australian worker get paid reproductive leave? — ABC Health, 1 November 2026
2. About endometriosis — Endometriosis Australia
3. National Employment Standards — Fair Work Ombudsman