Six things that land on the owner
The fine lands on the tradesperson. Everything in this table lands on the person who owns the house.
| What you lose | Why |
|---|---|
| Home warranty cover | Every state scheme is bought by a licensed contractor for a licensed job. An unlicensed contractor cannot buy it, so the safety net was never there. |
| Your own insurance claim | Where damage was caused by illegal work, an insurer may decline it. |
| The compliance paperwork | No certificate for the electrical or plumbing work, so nothing to hand a buyer, a strata committee or an insurer later. |
| Anyone to enforce against | The statutory warranty survives. The business often does not. |
| The rectification cost | Somebody licensed has to undo it and redo it, and that somebody sends the bill to you. |
| Time | The regulator can prosecute. Prosecution is not repair, and it does not run to your timetable. |
The home warranty scheme does not reach unlicensed work
Queensland's regulator states it in one sentence: “unlicensed work is not covered by the Queensland Home Warranty Scheme (QHWS), which is administered by the QBCC and is separate to any home and contents insurance policies taken out by an owner.”
The second half of that sentence is the part people miss. The warranty scheme and your house insurance are two different things, and losing one does not put you inside the other.
The QBCC also states the threshold that pulls a job into the scheme: “It is a legal requirement that building work over the value of $3,300 must be performed by an appropriately licensed individual and must be accompanied by a contract.” And on the consequence: unlicensed work “is illegal work and potentially dangerous and can lead to owners having to spend significantly more money in the future to rectify any defective work.”
Source: QBCC, Don't risk further damage by unlicensed building work, 4 April 2025, read 3 September 2026.
The same hole, in three states
| State | The scheme | Who obtains it |
|---|---|---|
| QLD | Queensland Home Warranty Scheme, “compulsory for all residential construction work valued at more than $3,300 (including cost of materials, labour and GST)” | The contractor. The premium is “collected from you and paid to us by the contractor” and must be “paid before work begins”. |
| NSW | Home Building Compensation cover, required “for each home building project over $20,000 including GST” | The licensed builder or tradesperson. NSW tells owners to “check the business has valid insurance for the work before you pay any money to the business (including the deposit) and before the work starts.” |
| VIC | Home Warranty from 1 July 2026, for “eligible domestic building work valued at more than $20,000”. Contracts signed before that date sit under Domestic Building Insurance instead. | The registered builder. An unregistered one is outside the scheme entirely. |
Sources: QBCC — What is home warranty insurance (last reviewed 11 May 2025); NSW Government — Insurance cover for building work (last updated 6 July 2026); Building and Plumbing Commission (VIC) — Domestic Building Insurance and Home Warranty (last updated 1 July 2026). All read 3 September 2026.
Your own insurer may refuse the claim
The Queensland Electrical Safety Office puts the risk in one line: “Major property damage from an electrical fire is also a risk and if it was the result of illegal electrical work, your insurer may refuse the claim.”
Note the word may. Whether a claim is paid turns on the policy and the facts, and nobody can tell you the answer in advance. That is precisely the problem: the point at which you find out is after the fire.
Source: Electrical Safety Office (QLD), Don't do your own electrical work, read 3 September 2026.
Electrical and plumbing have no threshold at all
For most building work a dollar figure decides whether a licence is required. For electrical work there is no figure. NSW states the rule flatly: “By law, any electrical wiring work must be done by a licensed electrician.”
Queensland defines the scope broadly. Under section 18 of the Electrical Safety Act 2002, electrical work includes “the manufacturing, constructing, installing, testing, maintaining, repairing, altering, removing, or replacing of electrical equipment” — which the Electrical Safety Office spells out as installing a power point, replacing a light switch, replacing a batten holder with a light fitting, altering the location of a power point, or replacing a light fitting with a ceiling fan.
Unlicensed electrical work in Queensland “has penalties of up to $40,000 for individuals”, and a breach exposing someone to a risk of death or serious injury attracts “a maximum penalty of $600,000 for an individual ($3,000,000 for a corporation) or five years imprisonment”. Those fines go to the state. Your switchboard is still wrong.
Sources: NSW Government — Electrical safety requirements and consumer rights (last updated 1 July 2026); Electrical Safety Office (QLD). Both read 3 September 2026.
The warranty survives. The person to enforce it against may not.
A common belief about unlicensed work is that you lose your rights. In NSW that is not what the Act says, and the truth is more useful.
Section 18B of the Home Building Act 1989 implies the statutory warranties into every contract to do residential building work, and it does so for “the holder of a contractor licence, or a person required to hold a contractor licence before entering into a contract”. The warranties — due care and skill, good and suitable new materials, compliance with the law, due diligence and time — are implied whether or not the person bothered to get licensed.
Section 10 then runs one way only. An unlicensed contractor “is not entitled to damages or to enforce any other remedy in respect of a breach of the contract committed by any other party to the contract, and the contract is unenforceable by the person who contracted to do the work. However, the person is liable for damages and subject to any other remedy in respect of a breach of the contract committed by the person.”
Section 94 does the same where the required insurance was never taken out: the contractor “is not entitled to recover money in respect of that work under any other right of action (including a quantum meruit)”, though a court or tribunal may allow recovery on that basis where it “considers it just and equitable”.
So the law is already on your side, and it is still a bad position to be in. A right you can only exercise against a person who has changed their phone number, dissolved the company or has nothing to pay with is a right on paper. What licensing buys is not the right — it is somebody solvent, insured and findable to exercise it against.
Source: Home Building Act 1989 (NSW), sections 10, 18B and 94, read in the in-force consolidation at legislation.nsw.gov.au, 3 September 2026. NSW law; other states reach comparable results by different provisions.
What it does to a sale
The problem at resale is not usually a legal one. It is a paperwork one.
A buyer's conveyancer asks for the trail: the compliance certificate for the electrical work, the certificate for the plumbing, the insurance certificate, the final approval for anything that needed one. Unlicensed work produces none of those documents, because the documents are issued by licensed people. There is nothing to hand over and no way to make one later.
Where the work was done under an owner-builder permit, NSW goes further and puts the duty in statute. Section 95 of the Home Building Act 1989 requires the owner not to enter a contract for sale unless it includes “a conspicuous note (a consumer warning)” saying an owner-builder permit was issued and that the work is not required to be insured. The duty runs for 7 years and 6 months after the permit was issued, it binds a later owner as much as the original one, and Building Commission NSW states the consequence plainly: if the warning is omitted, “the purchaser can void the sale contract before settlement.”
Sources: Home Building Act 1989 (NSW) s95, read at legislation.nsw.gov.au; NSW Government, Working as an owner-builder. Both read 3 September 2026.
What a licence is actually buying you
Set against all of that, the list of what a licence puts behind the job is short and concrete:
- A scheme that pays when the contractor cannot. Home warranty cover exists precisely for the contractor who died, disappeared, went insolvent or refuses to come back.
- Insurance you can name. Queensland requires licensed electrical contractors to hold “a minimum of $5 million public liability insurance, with a $50,000 consumer protection component”, and says of the alternative: “Unlicensed and DIY electrical work does not provide this assurance or protection.”
- A public record. A licence number gives you a history to read before you hire and a body to complain to afterwards.
- The certificates. Which is what you will need at sale, at claim time, and every time somebody asks who did this.
Checking takes about a minute
Every state and territory publishes a free public register, and the check is the same everywhere: a name, a number, and whether the class of licence covers the work you are asking for. Do it before the deposit, not after the invoice.
Check a licence, every stateIf the work has already been done and you think the person was not licensed, the regulator that issues the licence is also the one that takes the complaint. In Queensland that is the QBCC for building work and the Electrical Safety Office for electrical work; in NSW, Building Commission NSW; in Victoria, the Building and Plumbing Commission.
General information for Australian home owners, not legal advice, and not an opinion on anybody's job, claim or policy. Whether a particular insurance claim is paid depends on that policy and those facts. Yamate is software; it does not vet, rank or recommend any tradesperson, and no regulator has reviewed this page. Every quoted sentence above is a regulator's or a statute's own, read at its own page on 3 September 2026 and linked in the section it appears in. Licensing thresholds, warranty schemes and insurance rules differ in every state and change over time — Victoria's changed on 1 July 2026 — so check your own regulator before relying on a figure. Yamate sells software to tradespeople and lists them in this directory.