Fluorescent Tube Phase-Out in Australia: What Businesses and Strata Need to Know

Byron Knight, Licensed Electrical Contractor

QLD Lic. 1511406 · 20+ years’ experience · Gold Coast & SEQ · Updated October 2026

If your office, shop, warehouse or building car park still runs on fluorescent tubes, you’ve probably noticed the lighting world moving on. There’s a reason for that beyond energy savings. The international treaty on mercury has set end dates for making and trading most remaining fluorescent lamps, and Australia is a party to it.

This guide explains what is actually being phased out and when, what Australia has and hasn’t said, whether you have to do anything, and the three ways to upgrade, including the one that causes the most safety problems.

What is being phased out, and when

Fluorescent lamps contain mercury. The Minamata Convention on Mercury lists mercury-added products that parties must stop manufacturing, importing and exporting. Two recent decisions added most fluorescent lamps for general lighting: decision MC-4/3 in 2022 and decision MC-5/4 in 2023.

The decisions describe lamps by phosphor type and wattage, not by tube size. In practice, most T8 and T5 tubes in Australian buildings fall into the halophosphate or triband rows, but that’s our reading rather than wording from the decisions.

What Australia has, and hasn’t, said

So be wary of anyone telling you fluorescent lights are “illegal” or must be ripped out by a set date. Nothing we found says that.

Do you have to replace your fluorescent lights?

No. The Rules restrict manufacture, import and export. They don’t say anything about using lamps already installed or selling existing stock. Your current fittings can keep working.

The practical problem is supply. Once imports stop, replacement tubes will come only from existing stock, so expect fewer options, more variation in quality, and less certainty about getting the same colour and output. For a building with hundreds of tubes, that turns routine relamping into a planning question. Three areas tend to bite first:

• Emergency lighting. Many older emergency battens use fluorescent tubes. Those fittings have to pass regular testing, so a tube you can’t source becomes a compliance problem, not just a dark corner. See our guide to emergency lighting testing in QLD.
• Car parks. Strata car parks often run 24 hours a day on fluorescent battens, so they burn through tubes fastest. Our strata car park lighting guide covers who pays and which standards apply.
• Long-hours workplaces. Warehouses, gyms and retail floors lit 12 or more hours a day get the biggest return from switching early.

Three ways to upgrade, and which one to avoid doing yourself

Modifying fittings is where most of the problems come from. The Electrical Regulatory Authorities Council’s information notice on fluorescent retrofits warned of insulation failures that left the metal body of a fitting live, and of one end of a tube being live while the other end was being inserted. It also states that a modified luminaire is considered a new luminaire, and whoever modifies it is responsible for its safety. The notice is old and has been superseded by an updated standard, but the hazards it describes haven’t changed.

Under Queensland’s Electrical Safety Act, replacing a part designed to be swapped readily and safely by an unskilled person, like a light globe, isn’t electrical work. Rewiring a fitting or bypassing its ballast is. Our guide to what you can legally do yourself in QLD explains where that line sits.

What about the energy savings?

Expect to save, but be careful with headline figures. The government’s well-known numbers, such as energy.gov.au’s “up to 75% less energy”, compare LEDs with old halogens, not with fluorescent tubes. We couldn’t find a government figure for LED against fluorescent. The same page notes that occupancy sensors can give substantial savings, and in our experience the controls often save as much as the lamps on sites like car parks, stairwells and storerooms.

To work out your own payback, you need three numbers: the watts each fitting draws now (including the ballast) against the LED replacement, the hours it runs each year, and your electricity rate. Multiply the watts saved by the hours, convert to kilowatt-hours, and apply your tariff. Add the relamping you’ll no longer pay for, and compare it with the fixed price of the upgrade. If you’re also seeing unexplained increases in your power bill, our post on what an electrician checks on a high power bill may help.

Getting rid of old tubes

Old tubes contain mercury, so don’t smash them or crush them into a skip. Bag a broken tube carefully and air the room. Councils handle household lamps differently from commercial quantities, and some charge businesses per lamp at recovery centres. For a full building upgrade, ask your electrician or waste contractor to arrange a lamp recycler and keep the paperwork. Check your obligations with your council or waste contractor, as rules for business waste can differ from household rules.

Planning an upgrade on the Gold Coast

1. Count and classify. List each area, the fitting type, how many tubes, and how many hours a day it runs. Note which fittings are emergency lights.
2. Start where the hours are longest. 24-hour car parks, stairwells and warehouses repay fastest.
3. Decide fitting by fitting. Sound fittings may suit conversion. Corroded, yellowed or brittle ones should be replaced.
4. Check lighting levels. A like-for-like swap can leave work areas too bright or too dim. Your electrician should check output, not just wattage.
5. Get approvals in order. For common property, the body corporate’s spending rules apply. See our guide to hiring an electrician for a body corporate.
6. Build it into maintenance. A staged plan spread across your preventative maintenance programme avoids one big outlay.

Coastal sites have one more reason to move. Salt air corrodes fitting bodies, lamp holders and terminals, and old fluorescent battens in open car parks and undercrofts in Broadbeach, Mermaid Beach and Kirra are often in worse shape than they look. Offices in Robina and Varsity Lakes tend to have large numbers of ceiling panels, which suit a staged changeover. Shops along Palm Beach and Burleigh Heads usually combine the upgrade with a lighting redesign. Our retail lighting guide covers that side.

We handle the work through our shop and office lighting, car park lighting, emergency and exit lighting and strata and body corporate services.