Cleaning a home: what the household is and is not
The labour hire licence points the other way at a home: the Authority’s guidance is that a cleaning business does not need one for domestic premises.
The reason is where the arrangement sits: a cleaning service for private individuals in their own homes is not the supply of workers to another person, and a place used as a person’s residence is not part of a commercial premises at all.
At a home: domestic premises need no labour hire licence.
Filled: a labour hire licence. A business that supplies workers to clean a commercial premises needs a labour hire licence, the Labour Hire Authority says.
Outlined: no licence. A cleaning business needs no labour hire licence for a home, the Authority says, and a place used as someone’s residence is not part of a commercial premises.
The fine diagonal: long service. For a covered worker in contract cleaning, the portable scheme counts the industry’s years, not the employer’s.
The tally: when a home pays its cleaner directly. The ATO rule for a domestic or private worker: eligible for super guarantee if they work for you more than 30 hours in a week, regardless of pay.
The licence line stops at the doorway
Everything the first guide sets out about supplying cleaners begins with a commercial premises. Take that away and the licensing question goes with it. The Authority’s own words for the domestic case are short: its commercial cleaning page lists the situation of a domestic-only provider among the arrangements that do not require a licence, because the work is cleaning for private individuals at their homes rather than the supply of a worker to someone else.
The Authority’s earlier example made the same split. In it, a company providing cleaners across a variety of commercial settings required a licence, while the same company providing only a domestic cleaning service would not, and the Authority said so in the same breath. A residence, in the Authority’s definition, is not part of a commercial premises: the definition’s list of buildings and places that are included reaches shops, restaurants and schools, and stops at any part of a place used as someone’s home.
The check that guide 1 describes, the register lookup and the follow-the-licence habit, is for commercial cleaning. The Authority’s own instruction to host businesses is written for commercial cleaning services.
Two ways a home gets cleaned
The resolved question for a household is which of two arrangements it is in, because the rules that follow are different ones.
| The question | A cleaning business at the home | A cleaner the household pays directly |
|---|---|---|
| Who the worker works for | The cleaning business provides the cleaning service to the private individual in their residence. | A sole trader or a partnership can provide themselves as the worker to the household; providing themselves is not supplying a worker to someone else under the Act. |
| The labour hire licence | Not required for domestic premises. | The licence is about supplying a worker to a host, and no worker is being supplied. |
| The super rule | Outside the Authority’s domestic guidance. | The ATO rule for a domestic or private worker sits with whoever pays them, and guide 3 walks the hours. |
| What the customer is owed | Consumer guarantees attach to services normally bought for personal or household use. | If the seller is not running a business, most guarantees do not apply to that one-off arrangement. |
Neither column is a better arrangement, and nothing here recommends one. They are simply the two shapes a home cleaning arrangement takes, and each brings its own rules: one is a service bought from a business, and the other is a person paid for their work at the home.
Where a directly paid cleaner changes the question
Paying a cleaner directly moves the questions from the licence side to the pay side. The ATO’s page for this is written for the person doing the paying, and its rule is short: “Domestic or private workers are eligible for super guarantee if they work for you for more than 30 hours in a week, regardless of how much you pay them.”
On the same page, in its section on employees under 18, the ATO cites SGD 93/1: the number of hours worked is the actual number of hours worked in that week, and the hours cannot be averaged across fortnightly or monthly pay periods. The third guide takes a week of each kind and walks the rule through them.
What the household is, in the official pages’ terms
Three official pages speak to a household that hires help at home, and each one addresses it in its own role. As the buyer of a service, the household is the consumer the ACCC’s guarantees are written for, and the guarantees are automatic: goods and services normally bought for personal or household use are covered. If a guarantee is not met, the ACCC says a remedy can be claimed, and the first step is to contact the business that provided the service and explain the problem.
As the payer of a domestic or private worker, the household meets the ATO’s rule above: eligibility turns on the hours in the week and, the ATO says, not on how much is paid.
As the client of a business that only cleans homes, the household sits outside the labour hire licence altogether, and the Authority’s domestic position is the one that applies.
What the household is not is a labour hire host: the host duty guide 1 sets out is written for commercial cleaning services.
A home’s week beside an office’s
At a home, the Authority’s domestic position holds: no labour hire licence applies to domestic premises. The hours a home pays its cleaner for are counted against the ATO’s mark at 30 hours in a week.
The same week at an office runs the other way, because that is where the licence lives, and the first guide explains why the two premises diverge. A home and an office a doorway apart share nothing but the week.