Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Panel beaters: workers compensation requirements in Australia

Statutory cover for injury to workers, arranged through each state or territory scheme rather than on the open market.

Data as at

Verified requirements, by state

  • Licence liability condition: No insurance condition found in the published licensing requirements. NSW Fair Trading's guidance on repairer licences and tradesperson certificates does not name public liability or professional indemnity insurance as a condition. Recorded at reduced confidence deliberately: the Motor Dealers and Repairers Regulation could not be retrieved, so this is a verified negative against the regulator's published guidance rather than against the full regulation text. Treat it as "no requirement is published" rather than "the regulation contains none". NSW · effective 2013-11-01 NSW Fair Trading · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: No insurance evidence is required for the licence or the certificate on the published requirements. What a repairer is actually asked for comes from elsewhere — an insurer panel agreement, a fleet contract, or a landlord — none of which is a licensing obligation. NSW · effective 2013-11-01 NSW Fair Trading · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: NSW Fair Trading, under the Motor Dealers and Repairers Act 2013 (NSW). TWO credentials sit side by side and both are needed: a repairer's licence for the BUSINESS — required if you carry on the business of repairing motor vehicles, including part-time work, mobile work, subcontracting, partnerships and companies — and a motor vehicle tradesperson's certificate for the PERSON doing the work, in the class covering panel beating. Anyone doing repair work in a repair business must hold the certificate for that class, including the owner of the business. NSW · effective 2013-11-01 NSW Fair Trading · 2026-08-24
  • Licence liability condition: No occupational licence exists to carry an insurance condition. A council permit governs land use rather than trade competence, and no insurance requirement was found at that level. VIC · effective 2026-08-24 Building and Plumbing Commission · 2026-08-17
  • Licence evidence required: None to an occupational regulator, because there is none. VIC · effective 2026-08-24 Building and Plumbing Commission · 2026-08-17
  • Licensing body: Nobody licenses motor vehicle repair as an occupation in Victoria. The Motor Car Traders Act 1986 (Vic) licenses DEALERS, not repairers. What a workshop needs instead is a local-government permit to dismantle, repair or keep vehicles — a planning and amenity control over the premises, not an occupational licence over the person or the business. VIC · effective 2026-08-24 Building and Plumbing Commission · 2026-08-17
  • Licence liability condition: No repairer licence was located to carry an insurance condition. QLD · effective 2026-08-24 WorkSafe Queensland · 2026-08-13
  • Licence evidence required: None found. QLD · effective 2026-08-24 WorkSafe Queensland · 2026-08-13
  • Licensing body: Not separately licensed as a repair occupation on the sources located. The Motor Dealers and Chattel Auctioneers Act 2014 (Qld) licenses dealers and auctioneers, not repairers as such. Recorded at reduced confidence: the Act was not read in full, so treat this as "no repairer licence was found" rather than a certainty. QLD · effective 2026-08-24 WorkSafe Queensland · 2026-08-13
  • Licence liability condition: No insurance requirement, but Western Australia has given itself the power to impose one and has not used it. Section 29 of the Act provides that "The regulations MAY require a licensee — (a) to hold or be covered by insurance that — (i) is in effect in respect of anything done or omitted in carrying on business under the licensee's business licence". That is permissive. The current Motor Vehicle Repairers Regulations 2007 were read in full and contain no regulation exercising it — the only prescribed conditions concern autogas premises standards and gasfitting supervision. So the position is the same shape as Victorian point-to-point and WA towing: a live head of power, a dormant obligation, and a requirement that could appear by regulation without the Act changing. WA · effective 2003-12-01 Consumer Protection WA · 2026-08-13
  • Licence evidence required: None. No insurance evidence is required by the licence or the certificate. WA · effective 2003-12-01 Consumer Protection WA · 2026-08-13
  • Licensing body: The Commissioner for Consumer Protection, under the Motor Vehicle Repairers Act 2003 (WA). Two credentials, as in New South Wales: a BUSINESS LICENCE for the repair business, and a repairer's certificate — or provisional certificate — for the individual doing panel beating. WA · effective 2003-12-01 Consumer Protection WA · 2026-08-13
  • Licence liability condition: Not applicable to repair work, and the distinction is worth being precise about because a neighbouring occupation does carry a hard condition. Section 12 of the Second-hand Vehicle Dealers Act 1995 requires a person to be insured in accordance with the regulations at all times when carrying on business as a dealer, and provides that a dealer's licence is suspended for any period for which the dealer is not so insured. That binds used car dealers. It does not bind a mechanic, panel beater, auto electrician or mobile mechanic performing repair work. SA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer and Business Services SA · 2026-08-13
  • Licence evidence required: Not applicable to repair work on the evidence found. A second-hand vehicle dealer, by contrast, faces automatic suspension of the licence for any period the required insurance is not in force. SA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer and Business Services SA · 2026-08-13
  • Licensing body: Panel beating and smash repair is not a separately licensed occupation in South Australia. What is licensed is selling vehicles, not fixing them: the Second-hand Vehicle Dealers Act 1995 binds a dealer, meaning a person who carries on the business of buying or selling second-hand vehicles. The available automotive credentials are training qualifications rather than state licences. This rests on targeted searches rather than an exhaustive negative search of every trade licensing Act. SA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer and Business Services SA · 2026-08-13
  • Licence liability condition: Not applicable. With no repairer licence in Tasmania there is no licence for an insurance condition to attach to. The pressure to carry cover here comes from the customer's vehicle sitting in your workshop and from whoever you lease the premises from, not from a regulator. TAS · effective 2026-08-25 Consumer, Building and Occupational Services Tasmania · 2026-08-25
  • Licence evidence required: Not applicable. No repairer licence exists in Tasmania. TAS · effective 2026-08-25 Consumer, Building and Occupational Services Tasmania · 2026-08-25
  • Licensing body: Panel beating and smash repair is not licensed in Tasmania, and this now rests on three independent negatives rather than a failed search. First, Schedule 2 of the Occupational Licensing Act 2005 is exhaustive by force of section 7 — the Act applies only to the occupations described in its four Parts, covering electrical, gas-fitting, plumbing and building services work — and the phrase motor vehicle appears zero times in the whole Act. Second, the subordinate legislation under the Act is a closed set of four instruments covering those same four fields, and since prescribed work is defined as work determined by the regulations to be prescribed work, no regulations means no licensable repairer class can exist. Third, the official index of all Tasmanian Acts and statutory rules in force returns zero occurrences of motor vehicle repair and zero of repairer. TAS · effective 2026-08-25 Consumer, Building and Occupational Services Tasmania · 2026-08-25
  • Licence liability condition: No insurance condition, and the search behind that covers the whole scheme: the words insurance, insured and indemnity appear zero times across the Traders (Licensing) Act 2016 and zero times across the Traders (Licensing) Regulation 2017. Both complete instruments, no occurrences. ACT · effective 2026-08-25 Australian Capital Territory Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: None at any stage. Eligibility under the Regulation is that each relevant person be an adult. Suitability is a character test — contraventions of a relevant law, convictions or findings of guilt including fraud or dishonesty, licence condition breaches, prior refusals or cancellations, the public interest, and having suitable premises. No certificate of currency at application, at renewal, on request or on audit, and no insurance-triggered suspension. ACT · effective 2026-08-25 Australian Capital Territory Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: Panel beating and smash repair is licensed in the ACT, which is not true of most of the country. Access Canberra licenses motor vehicle repairers under the Traders (Licensing) Act 2016, which absorbed the licensing provisions of the Fair Trading (Motor Vehicle Repair Industry) Act 2010 — that Act survives only as the source of the definition of motor vehicle repair work. A motor vehicle repairer is an entity that performs motor vehicle repair work for reward, and "for reward" is the trigger. One licence category covers the lot: mechanics, mobile mechanics, panel beaters and auto electricians are not separately licensed classes. ACT · effective 2026-08-25 Australian Capital Territory Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence liability condition: Not applicable. With no repairer licence in the Territory there is no licence for an insurance condition to attach to. That does not make cover optional in practice: the pressure comes from the customer's vehicle sitting in your workshop and from whoever you rent the premises from, not from a regulator. NT · effective 2026-08-24 Northern Territory Government · 2026-08-25
  • Licence evidence required: Not applicable. No repairer licence exists in the Northern Territory. NT · effective 2026-08-24 Northern Territory Government · 2026-08-25
  • Licensing body: Panel beating and smash repair is not a licensed occupation in the Northern Territory. There is no Motor Vehicle Repairers Act or equivalent. The Administrative Arrangements Order 2026, which lists every Act administered by every Territory minister and agency, contains no repairer licensing statute — the Motor Vehicles Act 1949 covers registration and driver licensing, and the Commercial Passenger (Road) Transport Act 1991 covers passenger vehicles. NT · effective 2026-08-24 Northern Territory Government · 2026-08-25

By state and territory

Licensing is a state matter, so the requirement behind this cover changes at the border. These pages track the licence question in each jurisdiction.

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