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Licensed work, certificates and who to call

Australia is stricter than most countries about who may touch plumbing, and the reason it matters to you is not the fine — it is insurance, resale and backflow.

Why this is a whole section on a DIY-adjacent site

Most home repair advice online is written for the United States or the United Kingdom, where the boundary between homeowner maintenance and licensed work sits in a different place. In Australia, the great majority of plumbing work must be carried out by a licensed plumber, gas work by a licensed gasfitter, and electrical work by a licensed electrician — and the specifics are set by each state and territory, not nationally.

This matters for three practical reasons that have nothing to do with penalties. Insurance: damage traced back to unlicensed work is a straightforward claim decline. Sale of the property: unlicensed alterations surface in inspections. Backflow: the rules exist because a cross-connection can pull contaminated water into the drinking supply — yours and the street's.

A compliance certificate is the piece of paper that proves the work was done by someone licensed and, in most jurisdictions, is required to be issued for notifiable work. Ask for it, keep it with the property records, and treat a plumber who resists issuing one as an answer in itself.

How to use this site. Every fault page here ends the same way: what you can check, what the part is, and the point where the job becomes notifiable, licensed work. We do not print a national list of what is DIY-legal, because there isn't one — we point you at your own state's regulator.

Licensed work guides

Sources

What this page explains is based on these official sources. If you check one and it does not match what you read here, send it to us and the article gets corrected.