Demolition contractors: public liability requirements in Tasmania
Cover for legal liability to third parties for personal injury or property damage arising from business activities.
Data as at
Verified for Tasmania
- Licence liability condition: Yes, but Tasmania puts the number somewhere almost nobody looks. Section 27(1) of the Occupational Licensing Act 2005 provides that the Administrator may, by notice published in the Gazette, require licence holders to be covered by insurance of a type and to an amount specified in the notice. The requirement is offence-backed: section 29(3A) bars a building services provider from carrying out building services work, or allowing it under their licence, without the section 27 cover. The type and amount live in that Gazette notice rather than in the Act, the Regulations or the Determination — which is why a figure cannot be quoted here. The Act itself never distinguishes professional indemnity from public liability; the word indemnity appears zero times across its 183 pages. TAS · effective 2026-08-25 WorkSafe Tasmania · 2026-08-13
- Licence evidence required: Production on request, not a gate at the counter. Section 29(5) requires a contractor or building services provider to produce a certificate of currency or other evidence of the required cover on request by an owner or occupier of the land the work is carried out on. The Building Services Work Regulations 2016 contain no issue or renewal insurance gate — a notable contrast with electrical work, where regulation 9(1) blocks issue or renewal unless the Administrator is satisfied a current policy is held and its term extends into the licence period. There is no automatic suspension on lapse either: the word lapse appears zero times in the Act, and insurance lapse is not among the section 46 cancellation grounds. Enforcement runs through the section 29 offences instead. TAS · effective 2026-08-25 WorkSafe Tasmania · 2026-08-13
- Licensing body: Demolition is licensed in Tasmania as building services work. Schedule 2 Part 4 of the Occupational Licensing Act 2005 brings within the Act the performance of building work including the construction, or demolition, of buildings or temporary structures. Licences are issued by the Administrator of Occupational Licensing within Consumer, Building and Occupational Services. TAS · effective 2026-08-25 WorkSafe Tasmania · 2026-08-13
What contracts commonly ask for
Principals and head contractors set their own insurance requirements, and those are frequently higher than a licence condition. The requirement that binds is the higher of the two, and both have to be read from the actual document.
What this cover costs
This site publishes no cost benchmark for this cover. A benchmark needs a real sample of documents, and none is published until the sample is large enough to compute a median honestly. A benchmark from a handful of policies is a guess with a decimal point.
Sources
- SafeWork NSW — SafeWork NSW — licences and registrations
- Victoria Government — Victoria — consolidated legislation
- WorkSafe Queensland — WorkSafe Queensland — regulator portal (WHSQ, Electrical Safety Office, WCRS)
- Government of Western Australia — wa.gov.au — Building and Energy, home indemnity insurance
- Government of South Australia — sa.gov.au — building indemnity insurance
- WorkSafe Tasmania — WorkSafe Tasmania
- Australian Capital Territory Government — Australian Capital Territory — consolidated legislation
- NT WorkSafe — NT WorkSafe