Yes, for government Parental Leave Pay for a child born or adopted on or after 1 July 2025. Not for employer-funded leave, unless a workplace agreement says so.
It depends on who is paying for the leave.
Government Parental Leave Pay: the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) pays a separate contribution into your super, worked out at the Superannuation Guarantee rate (12 per cent) on the Parental Leave Pay you received. It arrives as one lump sum after the end of the financial year.
Paid parental leave from your employer: the Superannuation Guarantee does not require super on it. Some workplace agreements do.
Unpaid leave: there is no pay, so no employer super is calculated on it.
The short answer, by type of leave
| Leave | Is super paid on it? | Who pays |
|---|---|---|
| Government Parental Leave Pay, child born or adopted on or after 1 July 2025 | Yes, as a lump sum after the end of the financial year | The ATO |
| Government Parental Leave Pay, child born or adopted before 1 July 2025 | No | Nobody |
| Paid parental leave funded by your employer | Not required by the Superannuation Guarantee. Some workplace agreements require it | Your employer, where an agreement says so |
| Unpaid parental leave | There is no pay, so no employer super is calculated | Nobody |
Only the first row is new.
How the new government contribution works
Its official name is the Paid Parental Leave Superannuation Contribution. The ATO shortens it to PPLSC. It was created by the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Adding Superannuation for a More Secure Retirement) Act 2024, which became law on 1 October 2024.
- You claim Parental Leave Pay from Services Australia. There is no separate claim for the super.
- Services Australia pays you. Parental Leave Pay is paid at the weekly rate of the national minimum wage, whatever you earned before.
- The financial year ends.
- The ATO works out the contribution: the Superannuation Guarantee rate applied to the Parental Leave Pay you received, plus an interest amount. The interest is there because the money arrives after the end of the financial year, not with each payment.
- The ATO pays it into a super fund as one lump sum. In most cases that is the fund your super contributions are currently paid to.
- The ATO lets you know when it has paid.
Parental Leave Pay is set at the minimum wage, and the contribution is calculated on that payment, so your usual salary does not come into it. For anyone who earned more than the minimum wage before the baby, 12 per cent of Parental Leave Pay is less than 12 per cent of their normal pay would have been over the same weeks.
The ATO’s page adds a few details:
- It counts as a before-tax, or concessional, contribution. It is generally taxed at 15 per cent when it reaches the fund, and it counts toward your concessional contributions cap
- It is not counted as income for social security, family assistance or child support
- If you share Parental Leave Pay with a partner, a contribution is paid into each person’s fund, based on their portion
- The ATO asks that your name and address match in its records and in Services Australia’s, and that the details your super fund holds match the ATO’s
Has it been paid yet? The ATO’s page, last updated on 24 July 2026, says it will start paying in the 2026-27 financial year. Its notice to self-managed super funds, published on 23 June 2026, says the first payments start from July 2026. As at 2 October 2026 we could not find an ATO or government statement confirming that payments have gone out. The ATO’s letter to you is the confirmation.
How long Parental Leave Pay runs now
For a child born or adopted from 1 July 2025, a family can share up to 24 weeks of Parental Leave Pay. For a child born or adopted from 1 July 2026, it is up to 26 weeks. For a child born or adopted from 1 July 2026, four of those weeks (20 days) are reserved for each parent on a use-it-or-lose-it basis.
It was not always shared, and it was not always this long.
Why there was no super on it for so long
Australia’s government Paid Parental Leave scheme covered children born or adopted from 1 January 2011, under the Paid Parental Leave Act 2010. It paid 18 weeks at the minimum wage. The scheme itself paid no super, and employers were not required to.
That was a decision, and it has a paper trail.
In 2009 the Productivity Commission reported on how a national scheme should work. Its report, Paid Parental Leave: Support for Parents with Newborn Children, did include super. It proposed contributions for longer-serving employees, and said the measure “should be deferred for at least three years and reviewed at that time.”
On 10 May 2009 the Rudd Government announced its scheme. The announcement said the scheme would be based closely on the Commission’s recommendations, and that employers would not be required to pay super on Paid Parental Leave.
So the scheme began without it. Deferred is a word that sounds temporary. It held for every child born under the scheme until the middle of 2025.
The scheme changed several times in between, and none of the changes added super:
- Dad and Partner Pay, two weeks at the minimum wage, was added for children born or adopted from 1 January 2013
- From 1 July 2023 it was folded into a single shared Parental Leave Pay, under the Paid Parental Leave Amendment (Improvements for Families and Gender Equality) Act 2023
- A 2024 Act lengthened the scheme each year, to 26 weeks by July 2026
The government announced in March 2024 that it would pay super on Paid Parental Leave. The law passed Parliament in September 2024 and took effect on 1 October 2024, for children born or adopted from 1 July 2025.
When it announced the change in 2024, the government said most people who receive Parental Leave Pay are women. So most of the people the scheme paid no super to were women.
Where this sits in the super gap
Super is built from pay. Weeks on a payment that carries no super add nothing to the balance.
By the early sixties the gap is measurable. In 2023-24, women aged 60 to 64 had a median super balance of $174,700 against $236,100 for men, a gap of $61,400, or 26 per cent. That is Super Members Council analysis of ATO data, published 18 June 2026. Why women retire with less super covers how the gap builds, and what is the motherhood penalty covers one of the causes.
Time on leave is one of the ways a gap like that can build. It is not the only one. The new contribution does not reach back to earlier births. It is calculated on the minimum wage rather than on your usual pay. And it covers the leave weeks and stops there.
If your super has a hole where your leave was, that is not a gap in you. It is how the scheme was set up in 2009.
If you received Parental Leave Pay for a child born or adopted on or after 1 July 2025, keep the ATO’s letter when it arrives. It is the record that the contribution was paid. How to read your super statement covers where contributions show up.
Write down one question for your employer or HR, and ask it before leave or on your return: does our parental leave policy or workplace agreement pay super on paid parental leave, and for how many weeks? The Superannuation Guarantee does not require it, so the answer sits in your agreement.
- Australian Taxation Office, Paid Parental Leave Superannuation Contribution, last updated 24 July 2026: who receives it, the Superannuation Guarantee basis and interest component, lump-sum timing, the 2026-27 start, tax treatment, shared leave, which fund, and the ATO’s letter. Read 2 October 2026 (ato.gov.au)
- Australian Taxation Office, Get ready for first PPLSC payments, published 23 June 2026: first payments from July 2026 to self-managed super funds. Read 2 October 2026 (ato.gov.au)
- Australian Taxation Office, Super guarantee, last updated 17 April 2026: the rate of 12 per cent for 2025-26, 2026-27 and later years, and qualifying earnings from 1 July 2026 (ato.gov.au)
- Australian Taxation Office, Explaining qualifying earnings: paid parental leave is not ordinary time earnings or qualifying earnings, and super may still be owed under an enterprise agreement. Read 2 October 2026 (ato.gov.au)
- Services Australia, How much Parental Leave Pay you can get, last updated 1 July 2026: no separate claim, the weekly rate of the national minimum wage, 24 and 26 weeks, and 20 reserved days for births from 1 July 2026. Read 2 October 2026 (servicesaustralia.gov.au)
- Services Australia, Providing Parental Leave Pay (employer), last updated 21 July 2026: employers do not have to pay super on Parental Leave Pay. Read 2 October 2026 (servicesaustralia.gov.au)
- Federal Register of Legislation: Paid Parental Leave Act 2010 (No. 104, 2010); the 2012 Dad and Partner Pay amending Act (No. 109, 2012); the Improvements for Families and Gender Equality Act 2023 (No. 4, 2023); the Adding Superannuation for a More Secure Retirement Act 2024 (No. 90, 2024, assented 1 October 2024) (legislation.gov.au)
- Productivity Commission, Paid Parental Leave: Support for Parents with Newborn Children, 2009 (pc.gov.au)
- Joint ministerial announcement of the Paid Parental Leave scheme, 10 May 2009 (formerministers.dss.gov.au)
- Prime Minister and ministers, 18 March 2024 and 22 August 2024 (pm.gov.au); Ministers Gallagher, Rishworth and Chalmers, 7 March 2024, and Ministers Gallagher and Rishworth, 19 September 2024 (ministers.pmc.gov.au)
- Super Members Council, Super balances growing but gender super gap persists, 18 June 2026: median super balances at ages 60 to 64, SMC analysis of ATO data. Data year: 2023-24 (smcaustralia.com)
- No worked figures, projections or return assumptions appear in this article