Twelve per cent of your ordinary time earnings, paid at least quarterly into a super fund, on top of your wages rather than out of them. That has been the rate since 1 July 2025 and it is the final legislated step, so it stays at 12%.
What counts as ordinary time earnings?
A narrower base than gross pay, and the difference is where quiet underpayment lives. It covers your regular wages for ordinary hours, most allowances, commissions, bonuses, loadings and in most cases annual leave loading.
It does not cover overtime, reimbursed expenses or genuine redundancy payments. For a working holiday maker on standard shifts that rarely matters. It matters in hospitality and on farms where penalty rates, loadings and overtime blur together and payroll calculates super on base hours alone.
When should the money actually appear?
Quarterly, which causes most false alarms. Employers must pay by 28 October, 28 January, 28 April and 28 July for the preceding quarter, so work done in July may not show in your fund until late October.
That lag is expensive for anyone leaving. Fly home in May and your final quarter's contributions are not due until 28 July, so a super claim lodged in June will not include them. This is one of the most common reasons a departing payment comes up short.
How do you check it was paid?
Two records, compared. Your payslip should show the super accrued as a separate line, and your fund's account should show the contribution arriving. Divide the super figure by your ordinary time earnings and you should get 0.12.
If the result is 0.115 or 0.11, the employer is using a superseded rate. Payroll systems were slow to update through the step increases and some employers set rates manually, so this is a real and recoverable shortfall rather than a rounding issue. The rate history matters if your work spans the changes: 11% in 2023-24, 11.5% in 2024-25 and 12% from 2025-26 onward, each applying to the period in which the earnings accrued.
Which fund did your super go to, and why does it matter?
Whichever one your first Australian employer defaulted you into, most likely, because of the stapling rule introduced in November 2021. Under stapling, a new employer must check whether you already have a fund and pay into that one rather than defaulting you into their own.
For an Australian who started work as a teenager this works as intended. For a working holiday maker it half works.
- On arrival you have no Australian fund, so your first employer's default becomes your fund by accident.
- Backpackers change employers fast, and the stapling record does not always update between a job in March and a job in April, so employers two and three may default you into their own funds anyway.
- Small balances transferred to the ATO as unclaimed break the chain entirely.
So a typical working holiday maker ends up with two or three accounts, each paying its own administration fee and often its own insurance premium against a balance of a few thousand dollars. To avoid that, nominate the same fund on the standard choice form at every job. Existing split balances are not combined retrospectively, and consolidating super across funds is a separate exercise worth doing before you leave.
What if the super is missing entirely?
Start with payroll, in writing, because a genuine administrative error is more common than deliberate non payment and is fixed in a week. Give the pay periods, the ordinary time earnings and the fund details, and ask what was remitted and when.
If that fails, unpaid super is recoverable through the superannuation guarantee charge process, a formal enforcement mechanism rather than a complaint, and it can be pursued after you have left the country. It needs evidence: payslips showing the super line, fund statements showing what arrived, employment dates and hours, pay rates and gross earnings, and the employer's name and ABN. See what to do when an employer is not paying super.
Cash paid work is where this fails most often, because there is no payslip trail and frequently no fund at all. The obligation is identical regardless of how the wages were paid.
Was it your base or your timing?
Twelve per cent is the rate for everyone, so a shortfall is usually about the base it was calculated on or the timing of the payment.
- Whether your earnings include overtime, which correctly attracts no super.
- Which quarter you are checking, since contributions are due up to four months after the work.
- When you are leaving, because the final quarter is usually still unpaid on your departure date.
- How many employers you had, which is how many funds you probably have.
- Whether any employer paid you cash without a payslip.
- Which financial year the work falls in, since the rate stepped up through 11%, 11.5% and 12%.
Everything paid in is claimable when you claim your superannuation after leaving Australia, where working holiday maker balances are withheld at 65% before payment.