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Home repairs that need a licence, a guide by Dotto

Five trades with no dollar line

The home repairs whose licence line is not a price

In several states, ordinary building work needs a licence only once a job passes a set value. Five trades work differently: what the job is, or who it is done for, decides the licence, and the price does not move it.

A strip of concrete footpath seen from above, with five cast-iron covers set into it, lettered ELEC, WATER, ASBESTOS, TERMITE and REFRIG, and the kerb along the bottom. ELEC WATER ASBESTOS TERMITE REFRIG
Five covers on one strip of footpath, each cast with the word for its trade. Each one leads to a guide below.

In New South Wales a contractor licence is needed for residential building work valued at more than $5,000 in labour and materials, GST included, and for all specialist work regardless of its cost. NSW lists that specialist work as electrical wiring, plumbing, drainage, gasfitting, and air conditioning and refrigeration work other than plug-in appliances.

General informationA summary of what state, territory and national regulators publish about licensed trade work at home, as at 9 October 2026. Each guide names the regulator to check with, and the rules as each regulator states them decide any particular job.

Dotto is not a builder, tradesperson or property manager. Dotto holds no builder’s or trade licence. It does not do, offer, contract for or arrange any building, trade or maintenance work. This is general information, not advice.

The dollar line, and the work that ignores it

For ordinary building work, each state that publishes a dollar line puts it somewhere different. As at 9 October 2026, the NSW Government sets it at more than $5,000 in labour and materials including GST, as above. Queensland’s building regulator, the QBCC, requires a licence to carry out or contract for building work valued over $3,300. In Western Australia, the Government says that, apart from class 10a buildings, which have their own line, most building work of $20,000 or more that needs a building permit must still be done by a registered builder.

Queensland’s own list shows the other side of the rule. Alongside the $3,300 line, the QBCC names work that needs its licence at any value, including drainage, plumbing and drainage, gas fitting and chemical termite management.

That second kind of work is what this guide is about: repairs and maintenance on a home where the question is not how much the job costs, but what the job is.

Five covers, five trades

Each guide takes one trade and sets the states and territories side by side, in each regulator’s own terms. They describe the rules; none of them explains how to do the work.

  1. ELECElectrical work at home: the trade with no small jobsWhat four state regulators say about electrical work at home, the small jobs they name, and what can follow work done without a licence.
  2. WATERPlumbing, drainage and gas: the short lists and the long ruleThe short lists of plumbing jobs some states leave to a householder, and where gas work stands beside them.
  3. ASBESTOSAsbestos removal: the line is area and type, never costHow the licence line is drawn by the kind of material and how much of it there is, place by place.
  4. TERMITETermite and pest treatment: licensed when it is done for othersWhy the pest licence turns on who the work is done for, and how Queensland treats termite work.
  5. REFRIGAir conditioners and fridges: the gas is what is licensedWhich refrigerants need a handling licence, and what happens to the gas when an old unit comes out.

How these guides read the rules

Every rule here comes from a regulator’s or a government’s own page, and each guide lists those pages at its foot. Where a guide says nothing about a state or territory, it is because none of the official pages it draws on speaks for that place on that point, not because the place has no rule.

Some lines in these guides are money figures, such as penalties and dollar thresholds. Each guide gives them as at the date its regulators’ pages were last read, and regulators change them.

One of the five covers carries a rule that belongs on every page that mentions it: the national Asbestos and Silica Safety and Eradication Agency says it is “not recommended that you handle or remove asbestos yourself”, and in some places the law goes further: in the Australian Capital Territory any removal needs a licensed removalist, unless it is part of minor routine maintenance or other minor work, and in Queensland a home owner must be trained before taking out more than 10 square metres of non-friable material, and only a removalist holding a Class A licence may remove friable material. The agency adds that a professional is easier, safer and often cheaper. It also says asbestos waste may go only to a landfill site licensed to take it, and that a household rubbish bin is not that place: putting it there can bring a fine.