Insurables — Australian business risk, sourced and dated

Tow truck operators: public liability requirements in Western Australia

Cover for legal liability to third parties for personal injury or property damage arising from business activities.

Data as at

Verified for Western Australia

  • Licence liability condition: No operative insurance requirement, but with a wrinkle worth knowing. The Act contains a POWER to make regulations prescribing, for a towing business authorisation application, "requirements for licensing, insurance and roadworthiness of tow trucks" — so Western Australia has given itself the ability to impose an insurance condition. On a full reading of the Towing Services Regulations 2025, that power HAS NOT BEEN EXERCISED: "insurance" appears only in the definition of an insurance company and in prohibitions on displaying an insurer's name or logo and on falsely claiming an association with one. A latent power, not a live obligation — and one that could be switched on by regulation without the Act changing. THE CROSS-BORDER POINT, and it is a real one: New South Wales DOES require tow truck operators to hold public liability and "on-hook" liability insurance, with certificates per vehicle. On the full text of the governing instruments, that requirement is a New South Wales outlier and does not generalise. An operator who assumes the NSW rule applies interstate is buying cover nobody is asking for; an operator moving the other way is losing cover they had. WA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer Protection WA · 2026-08-13
  • Licence evidence required: None currently. Watch the regulations rather than the Act, since that is where any requirement would appear. WA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer Protection WA · 2026-08-13
  • Licensing body: Western Australia under the Towing Services Act 2024 (WA) and the Towing Services Regulations 2025 (WA), through a towing business authorisation and a towing worker authorisation. NOTE A COMMENCEMENT ISSUE: on the compilation reviewed, the Part of the Act dealing with towing businesses had not yet come into operation and was to be proclaimed. Confirm the current commencement position before relying on this. WA · effective 2026-08-24 Consumer Protection WA · 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