Finish automatic mutual recognition of occupational licences
A national scheme letting a licensed worker work interstate without reapplying has been law since 2021. Queensland is not in it, electrical work is not scheduled to enter it in New South Wales until October 2027, and engineers are registered in only three jurisdictions. The reform was passed; it was not finished.
Rationale
This is the clearest case in this database of a completed reform that does not yet do what it says.
Under automatic mutual recognition a worker licensed in one state may work in another on that licence, without applying, waiting or paying again. It removes a step rather than accelerating one, which is the strongest form of reform this site records. It has been law since 2021.
What is actually in place:
- Queensland is not a participating jurisdiction. The state with a large construction pipeline and a major events programme sits outside the national labour mobility scheme.
- Electrical work is not scheduled to commence under AMR in New South Wales until 1 October 2027, six years after the scheme began. In the interim an east coast arrangement covers electricians from Queensland, Victoria and the ACT working in NSW -- a bilateral patch over a national scheme.
- Engineers are registered in three jurisdictions, so there is limited scope for mutual recognition of a registration that mostly does not exist. Registration schemes introduced independently and inconsistently across states create a mobility barrier that then requires a separate reform to remove.
- Occupation-by-occupation exclusions mean a worker must check whether their trade is covered before relying on the scheme, which for many is equivalent to not having it.
This matters directly to the housing target. The construction trades deficit has been forecast at 15 to 20 per cent in critical trades. A licensing regime that makes it administratively harder to move a qualified electrician from Brisbane to a Sydney site than to import one is working against the objective it is meant to be neutral about.
Who acts: Queensland, to join. New South Wales, to bring forward electrical. All states, to converge on engineer registration. The Commonwealth, only through national cabinet -- it cannot compel any of this, which is why it has not happened.
What is being traded away
The trade here is real, and the electrical carve-outs are not bureaucratic inertia.
Licensing standards are not identical, and the differences are often the point. Electrical licensing varies between states in scope of work, testing regime and continuing competency requirements. Automatic recognition means the lowest standard among participating jurisdictions becomes the effective national standard for mobile workers. In a trade where the failure mode is electrocution and fire, that is not a theoretical concern, and the unions and regulators raising it are not protecting turf.
Enforcement follows the licence, not the worker. A worker licensed interstate is regulated by their home regulator, which has weaker practical means to investigate conduct occurring elsewhere and less incentive to. The consumer of the work is in one state, the disciplinary power is in another. Complaint handling across borders is the weakest part of the existing scheme and completing coverage makes more use of it.
Convergence is the real reform and it is much harder. The honest version of this proposal is not "finish AMR" but "make the underlying licences equivalent so that recognising them is safe" -- which is slow, contested, and unglamorous, and which no government gets credit for. Recognising non-equivalent licences and calling it labour mobility is the easier path and the worse one.
Note on scope. This reform has no targets in the database, because the occupational licensing processes it would change are not yet mapped. That is a gap in this project, not an argument, and the proposal should be treated as weaker than the others here until the steps exist to point at.
Precedent
Automatic mutual recognition is existing Commonwealth law, operating in every state and territory except Queensland, across a range of occupations. Nothing new needs to be designed.
Sources
- Mutual Recognition Amendment Act 2021 (Cth), automatic deemed registration provisions
- NSW Government, published automatic mutual recognition occupation coverage and commencement dates
- Engineers Australia, submission to the Productivity Commission on occupational licensing and international standards, September 2025
- Housing Industry Association, forecast trades deficit, 2026