Licence numbers and registration details in advertising

Several Australian states and territories require certain licensed trades to display their licence or registration number in advertising, and a business website is generally treated as advertising for this purpose. The requirement is state-based rather than a single national rule, it applies to specific licensed occupations rather than to businesses generally, and the details — which occupations, which format, which penalties — differ by jurisdiction and by regulator.

This page describes the general pattern across several regulators. It is not a statement about any specific business’s obligations. Whether a licence-display requirement applies to your occupation, in your state or territory, is a question for that state or territory’s own regulator, not something this page can determine for you.

Two separate questions, not one, for Queensland and NSW trade licensing — and this table keeps them apart deliberately

It is easy to compress this into a single row per state and lose exactly the distinction that matters: whether a licence is required at all for a given job is one question, decided against a dollar threshold that varies by jurisdiction. What a licensee must display once advertising is a second, separate question, and — in at least one of the two regulators this page has verified — it does not depend on the value of the job being advertised at all. Collapsing the two into one row makes the display duty look threshold-gated when it is not, and erases real differences in what each regulator actually requires to be shown.

Jurisdiction	Regulator	Threshold below which a licence is not required	Advertising display duty (once a licence applies)
Queensland	Queensland Building and Construction Commission (QBCC)	$3,300 — building work at or below this value generally does not require a QBCC licence. This general threshold does not apply to certain trades: plumbing and drainage, gas fitting, building inspections, fire protection work and some mechanical services require a QBCC licence at any value.	Licensee name and QBCC licence number, legible and reasonably prominent, in every advertisement, regardless of the value of the specific job being advertised. QBCC’s own published requirement does not extend to a business telephone number or a stated category of work.
New South Wales	NSW Fair Trading	$5,000 — residential building work at or below this value generally does not require a contractor licence. Specialist work (for example, electrical or plumbing work) requires a licence regardless of value.	Licensee name, licence number with the correct category of work, and a business telephone number, in every advertisement, regardless of the value of the specific job being advertised.
Other states and territories	Each state and territory operates its own building and trade licensing regulator	Thresholds and exemptions differ by jurisdiction and are not stated here	Requirements exist in most jurisdictions for at least some licensed trades; the specific details this site has not independently verified for every state should be confirmed with that state’s own regulator

The threshold and the display duty are governed by different rules even within the same regulator, which is why the table states them in separate columns rather than one combined “requirement.” A business whose jobs sit below the relevant threshold may need no licence and no display obligation at all for that work. A business that holds a licence — because its trade requires one at any value, or because a specific job exceeds the threshold — is subject to the display duty on every advertisement for licensed work, irrespective of what that specific job is worth.

Note that NSW’s display duty is a materially larger obligation than Queensland’s: a business advertising in NSW needs to show a category of work and a phone number that QBCC’s own published requirement does not ask for at all. A business operating in both states cannot use one compliant advertisement template for both regulators — meeting Queensland’s requirement does not meet NSW’s, and the reverse is equally true.

This table describes the pattern this site has verified for the two most heavily documented regulators, from the sources cited below. It is not exhaustive of every Australian jurisdiction or every licensed occupation, and it should not be read as confirming or ruling out a requirement, a threshold or a display duty in a jurisdiction not listed.

Why licence number requirements are a state-based question across trades and trade licensing, not a national one

Trade licensing in Australia is administered at the state and territory level, not nationally, and each regulator sets its own rules about what must appear in advertising, including whether a website counts, what format the number must be displayed in, and what the applicable penalty is for a breach. A rule confirmed for one state does not transfer to another, and a business operating across state lines may need to satisfy more than one regulator’s requirement simultaneously if it holds licences in more than one jurisdiction.

What “advertising” is generally understood to include

Regulators that impose this requirement generally define advertising broadly enough to capture a business website, social media profiles, vehicle signage, printed material and directory listings together, rather than treating a website as a special case exempt from a rule that applies elsewhere. The exact definition, and any exemptions within it, are set out in each regulator’s own published guidance rather than in a general summary.

Why this is not limited to building, plumbing and gas trades

Building and construction trades are the most visible and most heavily documented example of this requirement, but they are not necessarily the only regulated occupations subject to a similar rule — other licensed trades and some professional services carry comparable advertising-disclosure requirements under their own, separate regulatory schemes. This page does not attempt to enumerate every such scheme; the building trades example is used because it is the most extensively documented publicly and the most common context in which the question arises for a website build.

What genuinely needs a business’s own regulator to confirm: licences, licensing and contractor status, not this page

Which licence class, if any, a specific business holds and which advertising rules attach to it. Whether a website’s specific content — a homepage banner, a quote calculator, a service area page — counts as advertising under a specific regulator’s definition. What penalty applies to non-compliance in a specific jurisdiction. Whether operating across more than one state creates an obligation to more than one regulator simultaneously. None of these can be answered generally, and each is answered definitively only by the regulator with jurisdiction over the specific licence.

What a website build should account for, once a licensed trade’s requirement is confirmed

Where a business has confirmed with its own regulator that a licence-display requirement applies, the practical build implication is straightforward. The licence number and any other required details need to appear on every page a regulator would treat as advertising, in a format that meets that regulator’s legibility and prominence requirements. The content management process also needs to stop the detail being accidentally removed during a later edit. This is a content and governance question for the build, once the underlying legal question has been answered by the appropriate regulator.

Why this matters at the website-build stage, not only the marketing stage

A licence number requirement is easy to satisfy once and then lose track of. It usually needs to appear on more than one page — a homepage footer, an about page, a quote request form, sometimes a specific service page. A site redesign or a content management change can quietly drop it from one location while leaving it on another. Where a requirement has been confirmed to apply, treat it as a content governance item to check at every redesign or major content update, not a one-time addition.

What changes if a business operates under more than one licence or trading name

A business operating under more than one licensed trade, or through more than one registered trading name, may need to display more than one licence number, potentially in different places on the site depending on which service is being advertised on which page. This is a genuine content-architecture question worth raising with a supplier at the brief stage if it applies. Do not just assume a single licence number in a footer covers every service the site describes.

What to do next: confirming with your regulator before tradies advertise

Confirm with your own state or territory’s licensing regulator whether your specific occupation carries an advertising licence-display requirement, and if so, what format and placement it requires. Do not rely on a competitor’s website, a general web page, or an assumption based on a different state as evidence of what applies to your business. Where this fits alongside the industry-specific content already covered on this site is on what a trade website actually has to do, which addresses the practical build questions once the legal position is confirmed.