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Since the Labour Hire Authority (LHA) was established in 2019, we have been working to ensure that all labour hire providers hold a licence under the labour hire licensing scheme and meet their legal obligations to their workers.

2021-22 was another busy year for the LHA.

The LHA received 925 new applications for labour hire licences and granted 1,044 licences including a number lodged in the previous year. Of these, 18 licences were granted with conditions. A further 118 licence applications were refused, and one licence was suspended.

We cancelled 373 licences. The most common reasons for licence cancellation were:

• non-compliance with legal obligations relating to workplace laws, and taxation and superannuation laws
• non-compliance with the Labour Hire Licensing Act 2018
• failing to lodge an annual report or pay the annual licence fee, and
• failing to inform us of certain and prescribed changes, including appointment of a new director.

We issued 2,189 requests for information from applicants and licensed providers as part of our ongoing compliance and enforcement work and carried out 84 field inspections of premises where labour hire workers were engaged.

Our enquiries team handled 8,367 telephone calls and 5,675 emails from labour hire providers, hosts, workers, and members of the community this year. Our Report a Problem form proved particularly helpful in identifying potential issues for investigation, with 204 reports submitted.

LHA Strategic Plan 2022-2027

Three years and over 6,500 licence decisions later, the LHA is shifting focus to ensuring providers are complying with requirements of the labour hire licensing scheme.

The LHA Strategic Plan 2022-2027 sets out how we plan to regulate the labour hire industry to protect workers from exploitation and improve the transparency and accountability of the labour hire industry over the next five years.

The Strategic Plan includes the LHA’s four Strategic Priorities:

• Create and maintain a fair and lawful labour hire industry
• Achieve high impact compliance and enforcement outcomes
• Educate and engage with industry and the community, and
• Be a great place to work that is safe, agile, collaborative and well governed.

We are determined to stop the exploitation of labour hire workers. To do this, we use tools proportionate to the harms involved. We:

• put labour hire workers at the centre of everything we do
• protect workers from labour hire providers who are unwilling and/or unable to comply
• understand there are labour hire workers who are being exploited in different ways
• recognise that labour hire workers are at a higher risk of being exploited because of the nature of labour hire
• recognise that exploitation is widespread in industries that rely upon low- or semi-skilled workers
• recognise labour hire workers experience harms with significant impacts in all industries and occupations, and
• support and educate labour hire providers who are doing the right thing.

Visit the Strategic Plan page to find out more.