Victoria’s Labour Hire Authority (LHA) introduced a significant round of licensing reforms on 1 June 2026. If your business works with a labour hire provider in Victoria, these changes affect the standards your provider now has to meet, and the scrutiny they face to keep their licence. This post explains the practical impact of the changes and what they mean for construction businesses working with Fast Labour Hire.
The reforms were introduced through the Labour Hire Legislation Amendment (Licensing) Bill 2025, passed in December 2025. They took effect across all Victorian licence holders and applicants from 1 June 2026.
The Standard for Labour Hire Providers Has Been Raised
The most significant shift is in how the LHA assesses whether a person is suitable to hold a labour hire licence. The threshold has been raised substantially across three areas.
Stricter Fit and Proper Person Requirements
Anyone who wants to be involved in running a labour hire company, whether as a nominated officer or a relevant person, now has to satisfy a more demanding suitability assessment. The LHA considers factors including character, professionalism, and integrity, alongside any compliance history with employment, workplace, and corporate law.
The LHA has also broadened what counts as a disqualifying history. Previous and ongoing compliance breaches across a wider range of laws, including bankruptcy, consumer protection, fair trading, and corporate regulation, can now be grounds to refuse or cancel a licence. This is a significant expansion from the previous focus on labour hire and workplace law specifically.
Financial Viability Is Now a Licensing Requirement
Labour hire providers must now declare that their business is financially viable as part of any licence application or renewal. The LHA must be satisfied on this point before granting or renewing a licence. This is a new requirement that did not exist under the previous framework.
The intent is clear: financially distressed providers create risk for workers and for the host businesses that rely on them. Requiring viability as a condition of licensing removes some of the structural risk that has historically allowed undercapitalised operators to continue trading.
Disclosure of Anyone Who Controls or Influences the Business
A new disclosure requirement now captures people or entities that control or influence a licence holder, even where they are not formally listed as a director or officer. This includes shareholders, investors, holding companies, external advisers whose guidance is routinely followed, and spouses or relatives with substantial influence.
If any such person or entity is found not to be fit and proper, the LHA can refuse or cancel the licence. The LHA can also conduct its own checks to identify undisclosed relationships. Failure to disclose is treated as grounds for licensing action.
New Standard Conditions for High-Risk Industries
From 1 June 2026, all new licence holders in four designated high-risk industries now face a set of standard licence conditions applied automatically to their licence. The four industries are horticulture, commercial cleaning, security, and meat and poultry processing.
These conditions target known vectors of worker exploitation. They include restrictions on supplying independent contractors, limits on subcontracting to a single tier, requirements to provide the LHA Information Sheet to all workers, restrictions on cash payments, and obligations around PPE supply at no cost to the worker. For horticulture and meat processing, minimum accommodation standards also apply where the provider or host supplies worker accommodation.
Existing licence holders in these industries will have the same conditions applied progressively from late 2026. Construction does not currently sit on the designated list, though the framework could expand over time.
Compliance Plans: What the LHA Now Expects
As part of the expanded assessment framework, the LHA may now request a business compliance plan from any provider. This is not a generic document. The LHA has specifically stated that templated, marketing-style, or generic business plans will not be accepted.
A compliant business compliance plan must be specific to the provider’s actual industry, workforce type, and business model. It needs to explain how compliance is embedded in day-to-day operations, not simply list the laws the business is required to follow. Areas it must address include the operating model, how that model meets legal obligations in practice across employment, tax, superannuation, WHS, migration, and labour hire law, and the specific controls the business uses to manage compliance.
This is a meaningful shift in how the LHA assesses compliance capacity. Providers who cannot demonstrate an operationally grounded approach to compliance face greater licensing risk under the new framework.
What This Means If You Work With Fast Labour Hire
Fast Labour Hire is a licensed Victorian labour hire provider. We operate across construction, manufacturing and warehousing, renewable energy, and events. The changes above represent a higher bar for providers in our industry, and we welcome it. Higher standards are good for clients, good for workers, and good for the credibility of the labour hire sector overall.
Our licencing compliance is current. Our business model, vetting processes, and employment obligations are built to meet or exceed the standards the LHA is now formalising. We hold ISO 45001, ISO 14001, and ISO 9001 accreditations across safety, environmental, and quality management, and we work with the Pursuit of ZERO partnership as part of our ongoing safety commitment.
If you are reviewing your labour hire arrangements in light of these changes, the most important question to ask any provider is whether their licence is current, whether their key people have passed the fit and proper person test, and whether they can demonstrate financial viability. We can answer all three.
For further detail on the regulatory changes, the full LHA announcement is available at labourhireauthority.vic.gov.au. LHA is also running information sessions across Victoria and online throughout June and July 2026 for businesses that want to understand the changes in detail.
Talk to Fast Labour Hire
If you have questions about how these regulatory changes affect your project or your existing labour hire arrangements, contact the Fast Labour Hire team directly. We place vetted, job-ready workers across Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Gold Coast, Geelong, and Adelaide, and we carry all employment obligations as the legal employer.
