In a recent article in Work, Employment & Society (Campbell and Burgess 2001), we examine the position of Australia in cross-national comparisons of temporary employment. Conventional analyses join together data on ‘temporary’ employment from varied OECD countries with Australian data on ‘casual’ employment. Australia appears in such analyses as a dramatic example of a high level and a rapid trend of growth in temporary employment, perched at the top of a ranking of these countries, just below the more familiar case of Spain. In assessing the value of such comparisons, we review both the distinctive category of casual and the distinctive practice of casual employment. We warn that the category of casual in Australia is not a direct equivalent to the categories used for temporary employment in other countries. Nevertheless, we conclude that a cross-national comparison incorporating casual employment is possible and indeed useful, e.g. in uncovering different dynamics behind national patterns of growth in non-permanent waged work.