Test and Tag Requirements in QLD: What Businesses Actually Have to Do

Byron Knight, Licensed Electrical Contractor

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

A lot of what’s written about test and tag in Queensland is now out of date. The Electrical Safety Regulation 2013 was replaced on 1 September 2026 by the Electrical Safety Regulation 2026, which sets these obligations out in Part 6, “Workplace electrical equipment”, and drops some of the terminology older guidance was built around.

This page works from the current Regulation. It covers what has to be tested, how often, what the tag has to say, who is allowed to do it, and the licensing question that decides whether the provider you engage can lawfully do the work.

What the Regulation actually requires

Two definitions do most of the work, and neither is intuitive.

The first is the kind of work. Part 6 sets separate requirements for amusement work, manufacturing work, service work, office work, construction work and rural industry work, each defined in the Regulation. “Service work” is the catch-all: work that involves providing a service and isn’t one of the others. The Regulation’s examples include cleaning a motel, cooking in a restaurant, teaching at an education facility and caring for children at a child care centre. Many cafes, shops, clinics and salons will fall here, but check the definitions against your own business.

The second is specified electrical equipment, and this is where many workplaces are narrower than they assume. It covers cord extension sets, portable outlet devices, and other equipment rated at 20 A or less that connects by a flexible cord and plug. Hard-wired equipment is outside it.

For office work and service work there’s an extra condition on that last group: the equipment only counts if it’s moved during its normal use for the purpose of its use.

Intervals under the 2026 Regulation

The intervals are set by the Regulation itself, and they depend on the kind of work and whether the equipment is double insulated.

Section numbers are given so you or your provider can check them against the Regulation rather than take anyone’s word for it.

The safety switch alternative almost nobody mentions

This is the most commercially useful thing on this page, so it’s worth stating plainly.

For office work or service work, section 138 requires that specified electrical equipment either be tested by a competent person at the stated interval, or be connected to a safety switch. It’s an alternative, not an addition.

That has a real consequence for a Gold Coast cafe, shop, clinic or office. If the circuits feeding your portable equipment are properly protected by working safety switches, scheduled testing isn’t the only way to satisfy section 138. Which makes the condition of your safety switches, and whether they’re actually being tested, the question worth answering first.

Two caveats:

• The safety switches themselves must be tested. Section 139 requires non-portable safety switches to be tested by a competent person immediately after connection and then at the intervals in AS/NZS 3760, and portable ones to be test-button tested on connection and then per the standard. Relying on the safety switch pathway without testing the safety switches leaves you worse off.
• It doesn’t displace your general duty. Duties under the Electrical Safety Act 2002 to make sure electrical equipment is safe apply whichever pathway you use. “We chose the safety switch option” is not an answer to a frayed lead nobody looked at.

For most operators the sensible position is a mix: test the leads, boards and portable appliances that actually get handled and dragged around, and make sure the protection on the circuits is sound and tested. Our guide on RCDs versus RCBOs covers what should be protecting each circuit, and if switches are dropping out during trading, why a safety switch keeps tripping explains what that’s telling you.

Safety switch types are defined by residual current

Worth knowing because it appears on quotes and in the Regulation’s wording. Part 6 defines a type 1 safety switch as a residual current device rated at not more than 10 mA, and a type 2 safety switch as one rated above 10 mA but not more than 30 mA.

For manufacturing workplaces there’s a further requirement. Where manufacturing work is the primary work at the workplace and a socket-outlet rated at 20 A or less supplies it, section 134 requires a non-portable safety switch to be installed for that socket-outlet before the work is performed, with a maximum penalty of 15 penalty units. There’s a carve-out for outlets more than 2.3 m above the floor supplying a luminaire or equipment rated at 150 W or less, and an exemption in section 135 where the business doesn’t control the equipment and can’t get permission from whoever does. If your workshop or light-industrial tenancy has unprotected outlets, that’s a safety switch installation question rather than a test and tag one.

What the tag has to say

Providers vary on this, so it’s worth getting right.

When a competent person tests the equipment and finds it safe, a durable tag stating the prescribed details must be attached. Those details are defined in section 123 and are less than many people assume: at least one of the test date or the date the next inspection is due, plus details identifying who did the test, such as their name or licence number, or their employer’s name or contractor licence number.

If the equipment is found unsafe, the obligation is firmer: it must be tagged as unsafe and withdrawn from use. An identified fault that’s tagged and then left plugged in is a worse position than one never found.

Who is allowed to do it

Two separate questions, and mixing them up is how businesses end up with testing that doesn’t hold up.

The person doing the work must be competent

WorkSafe Queensland describes a competent person as someone with the knowledge and skill to inspect and test electrical equipment, gained through training, qualifications, experience or a combination of these. It’s a capability test, not a licence test, and WorkSafe’s position is that it’s the duty of the business (the PCBU) to decide whether someone is competent.

WorkSafe points to the unit of competency UEERL0003 Conduct in-service safety testing of electrical cord connected equipment and cord assemblies as one piece of evidence of competence. That’s the thing to ask for by name.

The business doing it for you needs a contractor licence

This is the part that catches people out when choosing a provider. WorkSafe Queensland says businesses performing testing and tagging as part of a business or undertaking must hold an electrical contractor licence permitting that work, and restricted licence holders need to check whether their licence covers it.

So a course certificate alone doesn’t make a provider licensed to do this commercially in Queensland. Testing your own equipment, in your own business, with a competent person is a different situation: the contractor licence question arises when a business does the work for someone else.

Repairs are a different licence question entirely

Repairing electrical equipment is electrical work under the Electrical Safety Act 2002 and needs the appropriate licence. A tester can identify a faulty lead; repairing it is licensed electrical work.

This is worth understanding before you engage a test-only provider, because the practical outcome of a testing round is often a pile of failed items. If your provider can’t repair them, you’re arranging a second visit by someone who can. Testing sits alongside our appliance safety inspections and basic repairs service for that reason.

What happens during a test

1. Visual inspection of the plug, lead and housing for damage. This catches a lot of real faults before any instrument is used, and it’s the step a rushed round skips.
2. Earth continuity test on earthed equipment, confirming the earth path is intact.
3. Insulation resistance test, confirming insulation hasn’t degraded to the point where current can leak.
4. Polarity check on leads and boards, confirming active and neutral haven’t been swapped.
5. Safety switch testing to AS/NZS 3760, a separate obligation under section 139 and often the thing that’s been missed.
6. Tag applied with the prescribed details, or an unsafe tag and withdrawal from use if the item failed.
7. Register updated with results, so you have a documented pattern rather than a snapshot.

The other compliance cycles that run alongside it

Test and tag is one item on a list, and the list is easier to handle as a schedule than as a series of surprises.

If your premises has emergency and exit lighting, that carries its own cycle: see how often emergency lighting needs testing in QLD, and why an exit light flashes if one is already telling you something. Switchboards in commercial premises benefit from commercial thermal imaging, which can find hot connections before they fail in trading hours. If you’re fitting out new premises, the certification you should receive at handover is covered in our commercial fit-out guide and our guide on electrical compliance certificates in QLD.

The efficient way to run all of it is a fixed-price preventative maintenance programme that schedules each cycle in advance. Where the building is strata, the common property side sits with the body corporate. Our guide on body corporate versus unit owner responsibilities covers the boundary, and our strata and body corporate service handles that work.

On the Gold Coast, specifically

Two local factors change what testing finds here.

Coastal air is hard on plugs, leads and outlets. Equipment kept in a back-of-house area open to salt air can degrade at the terminals faster than the same gear inland, the same mechanism behind salt air killing outdoor power points. Corrosion at a connection raises resistance, and resistance means heat, which is one reason a lead that passed a year ago can fail now. It’s also why a burning smell near an outlet needs immediate attention rather than a diary note.

The second is the local mix of tenancies. Hospitality through Broadbeach and Burleigh Heads and retail through Robina will often be service work, with the annual interval and the safety switch alternative available. Offices through Southport may be office work, where the interval stretches to five years and the real obligation sits on leads and boards. Workshops and light industrial tenancies through Nerang and Molendinar may be manufacturing work, where the intervals are shorter and the safety switch requirement on socket-outlets is separate, mandatory and carries a penalty.

That last distinction is worth getting right: a light-engineering tenancy is not on the same footing as the cafe next door.