How to Check a Contractor Licence, White Card or High Risk Work Ticket

Anyone can buy a hi-vis vest. Plenty of people can produce a plausible-looking card. What separates a compliant crew from an expensive incident report is whether somebody actually checked the credentials against the registers that issue them, and wrote the check down.

This is the reference we wished existed the last time we went looking. Where to verify each type of credential, state by state, what the registers genuinely can’t tell you, and how to record a check so it still protects you in an audit two years later. Bookmark it, because the registers move around and we keep the links current.

One orientation note first. “Checking a licence” means three different checks that get blurred into one, and they run through entirely different systems.

1. The business. Is this contracting entity real, registered and licensed to take the work?
2. The card. Does this person hold general construction induction, the White Card?
3. The ticket. Does this person hold the high risk work licence class the task needs?

Do them in that order. A perfectly licensed operator working through a deregistered entity is still a problem you own. And verification is step two of a wider job: what to collect in the first place, insurances and SWMS included, is covered in the subcontractor onboarding checklist.

Start with the entity, not the person

Before any trade register, spend two minutes on the business itself. ABN Lookup confirms the ABN is active, who holds it, and whether they’re registered for GST. It also exposes the classic trap. The name on the ute is a trading name, the licence is held under a legal entity name, and the two don’t obviously match. Search both, and keep the legal entity name for every register search that follows.

If the entity checks out, move to the licence their trade requires.

Contractor and trade licence registers, state by state

Building and trade licensing is state-based, so the register depends on where the work happens, not where the contractor lives. These are the public search points.

Search by the legal entity name and by the individual’s name, because some states license the entity, some the individual, and some both. Check the licence class covers the scope of your work, not just the trade. A builder licensed for residential work isn’t licensed for your commercial fit-out because the register returned a green tick.

If the crew arrives through a labour hire provider rather than a direct engagement, there’s a fourth check that isn’t optional in the licensed states. Victoria’s Labour Hire Authority register and the Queensland labour hire licensing register both let you confirm the provider holds a current licence, and hosts in those states commit an offence by using an unlicensed provider. SA and the ACT run schemes too, searchable through the same state licensing bodies above.

White Cards, and what nobody tells you about checking them

The White Card, formally general construction induction, is where verification gets uncomfortable. There is no single national public register where you type a card number and get a yes or no. Cards are issued state by state through approved training providers, and what’s checkable varies.

So the practical process looks like this. Sight the physical or digital card. Confirm the name matches photo ID. Check the issuing state and RTO details look coherent, and treat a card with no RTO number, odd fonts or laminated-at-home energy as exactly what it appears to be. Where doubt remains, the issuing state’s WHS regulator can confirm a card they issued, and several states now issue digital cards that are considerably harder to fake than the old cardboard.

Two genuine rules worth knowing. A White Card from any state is valid nationally, so a Queensland card on a WA site is fine. And a card doesn’t expire on paper, but most regulators treat it as lapsed if the holder has been out of construction work for two years or more. Asking “when did you last work on the tools” is a legitimate part of the check.

High risk work licences

High risk work licences cover the nationally defined classes, forklifts, specific crane types, elevating work platforms with a boom of 11 metres or more, dogging and rigging, and the rest. They’re issued by each state’s WHS regulator against national standards, and a licence from one state is valid in all of them. Safe Work Australia maintains the framework, while the state regulators run licensing and their own verification services, like the NSW check built into Service NSW’s verify tool or the regulator lookups run by WorkSafe WA and WorkSafe Queensland.

The check that matters is class against task. HRW licences are issued per class, and the class codes are specific. A CN licence doesn’t cover a slewing crane over 100 tonnes. A forklift LF doesn’t cover an order picker LO. The register will happily confirm a licence is current while the class printed on it has nothing to do with the machine you’re about to hand over. Match the code to the work, every time.

And remember what the licence doesn’t prove. Plenty of high-consequence plant, excavators, loaders, dump trucks, needs no HRW licence at all. For that equipment, competency is demonstrated through training records and a current verification of competency, which most major sites now demand per machine type regardless of what tickets an operator holds.

A worked example, end to end

Say you’re a Brisbane civil contractor bringing on a subbie electrician for switchboard work, and their crew includes an EWP operator. Hypothetical names, real process.

First the entity. ABN Lookup on the name from the quote, which turns out to be a trading name for a Pty Ltd. Active ABN, GST registered, legal entity name captured. Two minutes.

Second the trade licence. Electrical work in Queensland means an electrical contractor licence for the business, so the entity name goes through the state’s licensing search, and the class and expiry get recorded. The individual sparky’s electrical work licence gets the same treatment. Five minutes, mostly finding the right spelling.

Third the site basics. Both workers produce White Cards, sighted against photo ID. One is a 2011 cardboard card from another state, still valid on its face, so the follow-up question is recency of construction work, answered convincingly. Noted anyway.

Fourth the ticket. The EWP in the plan has a 13-metre boom, which puts it in high risk work territory. The operator’s WP class licence gets verified through the issuing state’s check, class code matched to the actual machine, expiry recorded. The boom size is the detail that made this check mandatory rather than optional, and it’s exactly the kind of detail a generic checklist misses.

Total, maybe 15 minutes. The value isn’t the 15 minutes. It’s that all four results now sit against the subbie’s record with expiry dates attached, so the next job with this crew starts from evidence rather than optimism.

What the registers can’t tell you

A register hit is necessary and radically insufficient. Five things no public register will surface.

• Scope mismatch. Licensed, but not for that class of work, that machine or that contract value
• Currency cliffs. Current today, expiring the week your job peaks. Registers show status, not your schedule
• Insurance. Public liability and workers comp certificates sit outside licensing entirely and expire on their own clock
• Site access. No register knows whether the worker holds your client’s induction or medical
• The person in front of you. A register confirms a licence exists, not that the bloke holding the phone is its owner. Photo ID closes that loop

A check that isn’t recorded didn’t happen

Here’s the part that decides whether all of the above was worth doing. Under the Fair Work record-keeping rules and every WHS due-diligence framework, what protects you isn’t having checked. It’s being able to show you checked. Date, register, result, who ran it, and the expiry that triggers the next one.

A screenshot dropped into an email thread technically meets that bar and practically fails it, because nobody can find it in 18 months. The workable pattern is a credential record against each worker and each contracting entity, with the verification evidence attached and the expiry dates driving alerts. That’s the model our subcontractor management software runs. Credentials, insurances and licence checks live on the profile, expiries surface before they bite, and the roster refuses to book anyone onto work their verified credentials don’t cover. The register check happens once, properly, and then keeps working.

For the broader system around this, our guide to qualification and induction tracking covers how credentials, inductions and medicals stay current across a whole workforce, and the subcontractor onboarding process piece covers the wider document set beyond licences.

The registers above will drift. Agencies rebrand, URLs move, states merge portals. We re-check every link in this article on a schedule, so if one has rotted since you bookmarked this page, the register’s name in the table will still get you there through a search engine in under a minute.

Frequently asked questions

Can you check a White Card online in Australia?

Not through a single national register, because none exists publicly. Verification means sighting the card, matching it to photo ID, and confirming the issuing details look legitimate. The WHS regulator in the issuing state can confirm cards it issued, and newer digital White Cards are significantly harder to forge than the old physical ones.

Is there a national register for contractor licences?

No. Building and trade licensing is state and territory based, so the search runs through the register where the work is performed, such as Service NSW, the VBA in Victoria or the QBCC in Queensland. High risk work licences are the partial exception, issued by states against national classes and valid everywhere.

How often should contractor licences be re-checked?

At engagement, then on a cycle matched to risk, with annual re-verification a sensible floor for ongoing arrangements. Set alerts on every expiry date you capture, licences, insurances and inductions alike, because the register won’t ring you when something lapses mid-project.

What should be recorded when verifying a licence?

The date of the check, the register searched, the exact name searched, the result, the licence number and class, its expiry, and who performed the verification. Keep the evidence, a saved extract or screenshot, against the worker or entity it belongs to, so an auditor two years later gets an answer in minutes rather than a reconstruction.

Does a licence check cover insurance as well?

No. Licensing registers say nothing about public liability or workers compensation, which are separate documents with their own expiry dates. Request certificates of currency directly, check the insured entity name matches the contracting entity, and diarise the expiries alongside the licence dates.