New Zealand's Domestic Violence Victims' Protection Act — 10 Days' Paid Leave and Workplace Flexibility

New Zealand's Domestic Violence — Victims' Protection Act 2018 passed Parliament by 63 votes to 57 after a seven-year campaign led by MP Jan Logie, and took effect in April 2019. It entitles any employee 'affected by domestic violence' — after six months' continuous employment — to up to 10 days' paid leave per year to deal with the practical and safety consequences of abuse, on top of ordinary sick and annual leave, without a requirement to prove the violence occurred. Employees can also request up to two months of short-term flexible working arrangements, such as changed hours, duties, or work location.
New Zealand's law is frequently described as a 'world first,' but the Philippines had already enacted a similar 10-day paid leave in 2004 (see the related practice, RA 9262); New Zealand's distinction is being the first Western/OECD country to do so, and its adoption was followed a few years later by Australia's own 10-day national entitlement (2022–23).
No government evaluation or independent impact study of the leave provision's effect on survivors' safety, job retention, or earnings was identified in this research; employer-level uptake data is not centrally published, so the law's real-world effectiveness remains undocumented rather than disproven.

Read the full analysis: https://www.al.nz/domestic-violence-victims-protection-act-2018/