Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Tilers: 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 public liability condition attaches to the licence. NSW Fair Trading's insurance guidance for building and trade licences does not name public liability insurance as a condition of holding a contractor licence or tradesperson certificate. The insurance that is mandatory is Home Building Compensation (HBC) cover, required for each home building project over $20,000 including GST where the work is residential building work (Home Building Act 1989 s.8A; prescribed amount set at $20,000 on and from 1 March 2015 by the Home Building Regulation 2014). The published exemptions are structural rather than trade-specific — contracts under $20,000, built-in furniture, build-to-rent, recognised housing providers, buildings rising more than three storeys containing multiple home units, work for public sector agencies relying on s.103E, certain retirement villages, and special exemptions approved under s.97 before work starts. Public liability cover is routinely required by head contractors, principals and site access conditions — but as a contract term, not as a licensing requirement. This is a verified negative established from the absence of any public liability condition in the licensing guidance, not from an express statement that none applies. NSW · effective 2015-03-01 Building Commission NSW · 2026-08-13
  • Licence evidence required: Evidence is given to the client before money changes hands, not to the regulator at licensing. Where the work is residential building work over $20,000 including GST, the contractor must provide the certificate of Home Building Compensation cover to the developer, homeowner or owner-builder before starting work and before taking any payment, including the deposit. NSW Fair Trading directs homeowners to check that a business holds valid cover before paying anything, and publishes an HBC Check tool for verifying a certificate independently. NSW · effective 2015-03-01 Building Commission NSW · 2026-08-13
  • Licensing body: NSW Fair Trading, under the Home Building Act 1989 (NSW). NSW licenses this work under Trade work as "Wall and floor tiling". A contractor licence is required for residential building or trade work valued above the prescribed amount of $5,000 in labour and materials including GST (Home Building Regulation 2014, Schedule 1 clause 2(3)(a)). Note the contrast with NSW's Specialist work categories — air conditioning and refrigeration, electrical, medical gas and mechanical services, and plumbing, draining and gasfitting — which require a licence regardless of the cost of the work, with no threshold at all. NSW · effective 2015-01-15 Building Commission NSW · 2026-08-13
  • Licence liability condition: No insurance condition where the work is done unregistered under the single-task exemption, because there is no registration for a condition to attach to. Where the business IS registered in a Domestic Builder (Limited) class, the domestic building warranty scheme applies to eligible domestic building work. Note what is NOT insurance here: Victoria's Minimum Financial Requirements are a SOLVENCY test — net tangible assets against approved workload — and from 1 July 2026 they replace the old Domestic Building Insurance eligibility assessment. MFR is about whether a builder can carry the work financially, not about whether anyone is insured. Confusing the two is easy and gets the answer wrong. VIC · effective 2026-08-24 Building and Plumbing Commission · 2026-08-17
  • Licence evidence required: Nothing where the single-task exemption applies. Where registered, evidence of warranty-product eligibility and Minimum Financial Requirements compliance before registration is issued or renewed. VIC · effective 2026-08-24 Building and Plumbing Commission · 2026-08-17
  • Licensing body: It depends on how the work is contracted, and Victoria draws the line in an unusual place. A tiling business can register with the Building and Plumbing Commission in the matching Domestic Builder (Limited) class — but registration is NOT required where the practitioner is only carrying out one task, regardless of the cost of that work. Victoria's own guidance names painting, plastering and tiling as examples. So a single-trade tiling contractor may lawfully work unregistered on jobs that would require a licence in New South Wales. VIC · effective 2026-08-24 Building and Plumbing Commission · 2026-08-17
  • Licence liability condition: Yes, through the Queensland Home Warranty Scheme — and Queensland's threshold is the outlier in Australia. Cover is mandatory for residential construction work valued at more than $3,300, against $20,000 in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. A job too small to trigger any warranty obligation interstate can trigger one in Queensland. Public liability, by contrast, is a contract requirement rather than a statutory condition of a QBCC trade licence. QLD · effective 1991-12-01 WorkSafe Queensland · 2026-08-13
  • Licence evidence required: The contractor pays the premium before the earlier of two points: work starting, or ten business days after the contract is signed. The obligation is on the contractor to pay it, not on the homeowner to arrange it, and it is time-bound from signing rather than from commencement. QLD · effective 1991-12-01 WorkSafe Queensland · 2026-08-13
  • Licensing body: The Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC), under the Queensland Building and Construction Commission Act 1991. QBCC licence classes are narrow and specific rather than broad. The relevant credential is a wall and floor tiling trade licence, covering cutting and fixing ceramic, glass, marble, slate, stone and terracotta tile. QLD · effective 1991-12-01 WorkSafe Queensland · 2026-08-13
  • Licence liability condition: No trade licence exists to carry an insurance condition. Where the work is contracted above the threshold and builder registration applies, yes, through home indemnity insurance rather than through the registration itself. Where residential building work valued over $20,000 is to be undertaken, the builder must take out home indemnity insurance IN THE NAME OF THE OWNER before accepting payment or commencing work. Note whose name the policy is in — this is cover for the owner, arranged and paid for by the builder, not cover for the builder. WA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer Protection WA · 2026-08-13
  • Licence evidence required: Nothing for the trade itself. Where builder registration and home indemnity apply, before accepting any payment including a deposit and before commencing work. WA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer Protection WA · 2026-08-13
  • Licensing body: Nobody licenses this trade in its own right in Western Australia. WA's own guidance puts it plainly: "You don't need a licence to undertake work as a tiler in WA if you're employed by a registered builder. However, if you wish to contract with others on building work valued over $20,000, you'll need to register as a building contractor." So the question is not what trade you practise but whether you CONTRACT for building work above the threshold — an employee needs nothing, a subcontractor above the threshold needs builder registration. WA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer Protection WA · 2026-08-13
  • Licence liability condition: No separate trade licence exists to carry a condition. Where a building work contractor's licence applies to the job, yes, through building indemnity insurance. It is required for domestic building work that must be approved by council and costs $20,000 or more. What makes South Australia distinctive is the stop rule: building work cannot start until the builder has taken out the insurance AND both the owner and the council have received a copy of the certificate of insurance. Two recipients, not one. SA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer and Business Services SA · 2026-08-13
  • Licence evidence required: Nothing for the trade itself. Where building indemnity insurance applies, before work commences and to both the owner and the council. SA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer and Business Services SA · 2026-08-13
  • Licensing body: Not separately licensed as a trade. South Australia licenses the CONTRACTOR rather than the trade: a building work contractor's licence from Consumer and Business Services covers those who carry out or arrange building work for others, and trades doing "specified building work" fall inside that regime rather than holding a licence of their own. The full statutory definition of specified building work could not be retrieved, so which trades it names is not established here. SA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer and Business Services SA · 2026-08-13
  • 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 Consumer, Building and Occupational Services Tasmania · 2026-08-25
  • 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 Consumer, Building and Occupational Services Tasmania · 2026-08-25
  • Licensing body: Tiling is not a separately named occupation in Tasmania, but that does not mean the work is unlicensed — and the distinction matters. Schedule 2 of the Occupational Licensing Act 2005 is the exhaustive list of occupations the Act covers, and Part 4 is drafted by activity rather than by trade: it captures the performance of building work including the construction or demolition of buildings or temporary structures. This work is building work, so it sits inside the building services envelope. Which class of licence covers it, and at what value threshold, is decided by the Occupational Licensing (Building Services Work) Determination, which could not be retrieved. Treat a flat claim that this trade is unlicensed in Tasmania with suspicion. TAS · effective 2026-08-25 Consumer, Building and Occupational Services Tasmania · 2026-08-25
  • Licence liability condition: No insurance condition on the licence. Only four of the ten ACT construction occupations carry one — building assessor, building surveyor, plumbing plan certifier and works assessor — and all four are professional indemnity, not public liability. The trade classes carry none. What does apply to every licensee, including this one, is section 47 of the Construction Occupations (Licensing) Act 2004: before providing a construction service the licensee must give the client evidence of what insurance they hold. The Act treats advertising the cover as sufficient, and gives the example of details on the vehicle used to provide the service. ACT · effective 2026-08-25 Australian Capital Territory Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence evidence required: Nothing is lodged with the registrar, because there is no insurance requirement on this work to evidence. The disclosure duty in section 47 still runs to the client rather than the regulator: whatever cover is held has to be shown to the client before the service is provided, and a fidelity certificate counts as evidence of insurance for that purpose. ACT · effective 2026-08-25 Australian Capital Territory Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licensing body: Tiling is not a separately licensed occupation in the ACT. Section 7 of the Construction Occupations (Licensing) Act 2004 sets out the complete list of construction occupations in the ACT, and there are ten: builder, building assessor, building surveyor, drainer, electrician, gasfitter, gas appliance worker, plumber, plumbing plan certifier and works assessor. The word tiler does not appear at all in either the Act or the Regulation; tiling appears only in the defect schedule. Tiling falls under a builder licence where the work is building work. ACT · effective 2026-08-25 Australian Capital Territory Government · 2026-08-24
  • Licence liability condition: Not applicable. With no trade registration in the Territory there is no licence for an insurance condition to attach to. Note that plumbing and drainage are separately regulated through the certifying plumber and drainer category, so work that touches drainage can pull a job into a licensed trade even when the trade itself is not licensed. NT · effective 2026-08-25 NT Building Practitioners Board · 2026-08-13
  • Licence evidence required: Not applicable. No trade registration exists in the Northern Territory for this work. NT · effective 2026-08-25 NT Building Practitioners Board · 2026-08-13
  • Licensing body: Tiling is not separately registered in the Northern Territory. The Building Practitioners Board registers building contractors in four sub-categories scoped by building class rather than by trade, and there is no trade-contractor licensing scheme of the kind found in Queensland or New South Wales. More than that, regulation 41A(2) of the Building Regulations 1993 pushes much of this work outside prescribed building work altogether: renovations or alterations to an existing Class 1a or Class 2 building with no increase in floor area are excluded, and the regulations' own worked example of an excluded renovation is re-cladding the roof or walls of such a building. NT · effective 2026-08-25 NT Building Practitioners Board · 2026-08-13

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