How to Hire a Plumber or Gasfitter in Queensland

Dave Henrickson runs Henrickson Plumbing & Gas out of Capalaba — eight tradies, two apprentices, and a small fleet of utes that spend most of their weeks bouncing between insurance hot-water callouts on the bayside and new-build estates out at Redbank Plains. Last winter, Dave hired a bloke who looked the goods on paper: ten years' experience, glowing references, said he was "fully ticketed". Three weeks in, a council inspector pulled up to a job and asked to sight his gas work authorisation. He didn't have one. The install was red-tagged, the client withheld payment, and Dave wore the cost — about $3,400 once you counted the rework and the embarrassment.

It's the kind of mistake that bites once and never twice. Hiring a plumber or gasfitter in Queensland isn't like hiring a chippie or a yardie — there's a layered licensing regime, a separate gas authorisation, and a list of supplementary tickets that vary depending on what kind of work your business actually does. This guide walks through what to verify before a new starter so much as picks up a press tool, what wages look like in 2024–25, and the posting mistakes that cost employers good candidates.

Start with the QBCC licence — and read it properly

In Queensland, all plumbing and drainage work must be carried out by a licensed person. The licensing body is the Queensland Building and Construction Commission, and the licence classes you'll see on a candidate's record are tiered. At the top sit Licensed Plumbers and Licensed Drainers, who can perform and certify work unsupervised. Below them, Provisional licences cover newly qualified tradies who need a period of supervised work before they can step up. Apprentices hold a separate Plumbers' or Drainers' Trainee licence tied to their training contract.

Before you make an offer, ask the candidate for their QBCC licence number and run it through the public Licensee Search on the QBCC website. The search will show you the licence class, expiry date, and — critically — any conditions or disciplinary history. A surprising number of employers skip this step or accept a photo of a wallet card. The wallet card is fine as evidence the person possesses the licence; it tells you nothing about whether it's currently active, restricted, or matched to the name on the resume. Always cross-check.

Be specific about scope. A Licensed Plumber can do water services and sanitary plumbing but cannot lawfully perform drainage work unless they also hold a Drainer's licence. The two trades overlap in apprenticeship training, but the licences are separate. If your business does sewer connections, on-site treatment plants, or stormwater drainage, you need someone with both, or you need to pair a plumber with a licensed drainer on those jobs.

Gas work is a completely separate authorisation

This is where Dave from Capalaba came unstuck. A plumbing licence does not authorise gas work in Queensland. Gas fitting — anything from LPG cylinder hookups to natural-gas hot-water installs to commercial cooking lines — requires a separate Gas Work Authorisation, also administered through the QBCC and underpinned by the Petroleum and Gas (Production and Safety) Act. There are different authorisation types: Type A covers domestic and most commercial gas appliances and pipework, while Type B applies to industrial gas systems and is a specialised endorsement most general contractors won't need.

When you ask a candidate "are you a gasfitter?", what you actually want to confirm is: (a) they hold a current Gas Work Authorisation in the right Type, (b) it's endorsed for the appliance categories you work on — natural gas, LPG, or both — and (c) it hasn't lapsed. Authorisations are renewed periodically, and lapses are common when a tradie has been doing mostly water work for a year or two.

If hot-water replacements form a chunk of your revenue, you also need to think about Plumbing Industry Council notifications and the Form 4/Form 9 compliance certificate workflow. Whoever you hire needs to be confident with that paperwork or you'll end up doing it for them after hours.

Tickets and cards to verify beyond the licence

Beyond QBCC paperwork, there's a stack of supplementary tickets you should sight and copy before a new plumber starts on the tools. The exact list depends on the work, but for a general residential and light-commercial business, the baseline looks like this:

• White Card — construction induction, non-negotiable for any site work.
• Driver's licence — open class, with a check for demerit history if they'll be towing.
• Backflow prevention endorsement — required for testing and maintaining testable backflow devices. If you do commercial fitouts, body corporates or food premises, this is essential.
• Thermostatic Mixing Valve (TMV) endorsement — needed for healthcare, aged care and childcare commissioning.
• Solar and heat pump hot-water training — manufacturer-specific certificates from Rinnai, Rheem, Sanden or Reclaim are often required for warranty claims.
• Confined space and working at heights — relevant for treatment plants, roof flashings and tank work.
• EWP ticket — yellow card for boom or scissor lifts under 11 m.

For mining or resources clients, the bar rises sharply: site inductions for specific operators, Standard 11, drug and alcohol testing, and often a rail safety worker card. If you're chasing that work, hiring tradies with the right tickets shortens the lead time enormously. A good place to scan what the resources sector is currently demanding is the mining and FIFO jobs board, where the inductions and tickets requested by hiring managers give you a real-time read on the market.

What QLD plumbers and gasfitters actually cost in 2024–25

Pay rates are where most employers either underbid the market and never get a response, or overbid out of nerves and erode their margins. The starting point is the Plumbing and Fire Sprinklers Award 2020, which you can read in full on the Fair Work Ombudsman site. The award sets minimum classifications and rates, but the market in Queensland — particularly south-east Queensland and the resources corridors — pays well above award for anyone with a few years on the tools.

As a rough current guide for full-time PAYG roles in 2024–25:

• Apprentice plumber, year 1: $14–$17/hr
• Apprentice plumber, year 4: $26–$31/hr
• Newly qualified (provisional licence): $38–$45/hr
• Licensed plumber, 3–5 years post-trade: $44–$52/hr
• Licensed plumber and gasfitter, 5+ years, dual ticket: $50–$62/hr
• Service plumber with own van, on-call: $58–$70/hr plus vehicle allowance
• Supervisor / leading hand: $75k–$110k salary plus vehicle

Day-rate and labour-hire rates run higher again — a dual-ticketed plumber-gasfitter on day rate in Brisbane can pull $720–$880 a day on commercial fitout work, and FIFO maintenance plumbers on the coal corridors are in the $900–$1,200 a day band when work is steady. If your model leans on contract labour, our day-rate and labour-hire jobs page will give you a sense of where rates are sitting in your region right now.

One thing to budget for: the tool of trade vehicle. Plumbers expect a fully fitted van with stock, and the running cost — fuel, tyres, servicing, insurance, replacement stock — typically adds $180–$240 a week per tradie on top of wages. Bake that into your charge-out rate, not your hope.

Hot-water specialists vs drainage specialists vs all-rounders

Plumbing in Queensland has bifurcated more sharply than a lot of employers realise. A tradie who has spent five years swapping out hot-water systems for an insurance contractor is a very different hire from a tradie who's been doing greenfield estate drainage for a civil sub. Both will tell you they're "plumbers", and both will technically be right, but their hand skills, tooling familiarity and diagnostic instincts diverge fast after the apprenticeship.

The hot-water and service specialist

These tradies are quick, customer-facing, and used to working solo. They diagnose by ear, carry common parts in the van, and turn over four to seven jobs a day. They're invaluable for any business with a maintenance book — they'll keep your clients happy and your invoicing rolling. Look for evidence of manufacturer training, gasfitting authorisation, and a clean record of compliance certificates lodged on time.

The drainage and civil specialist

Drainage tradies live in trenches and treatment-plant pits. They're confident reading hydraulic plans, operating excavators and laser levels, and working alongside concreters and surveyors. If your business runs new builds, subdivisions or commercial sites, you want at least one of these on the crew. Many also hold their excavator and skid-steer tickets, which saves you hiring a separate plant operator for small jobs.

The all-rounder

True all-rounders — confident in service, rough-in, gas and drainage — are rarer and pricier than employers expect. They tend to be 8-to-15 years post-trade and command a premium because they can run a job from contract to completion without help. If you're a small operator (under five tradies), an all-rounder is usually the right second hire after yourself, because they cover the gaps in your own week.

Common posting pitfalls that cost you good applicants

Once you know who you're after, the job ad itself matters more than most employers admit. Walking through the listings on the plumbing jobs board on any given week, you can pick the ads that will pull strong candidates and the ones that won't — and the difference is almost always in the detail.

The first pitfall is being vague about scope. "Plumber wanted, busy company" tells a tradie nothing. Are you doing service, new builds, commercial maintenance, gas hot-water swap-outs, or all four? Experienced plumbers self-select hard on scope because they know what they're good at. Spell it out.

The second is hiding the pay. The strongest applicants don't apply to ads with no rate listed — they assume you're either underpaying or fishing. Give a band, even a wide one ("$45–$55/hr depending on tickets and experience") and you'll see your response rate lift sharply.

The third is listing every ticket you could possibly want as "essential". If you mark backflow, TMV, confined space, EWP and an excavator ticket all as essential, you've narrowed your pool to maybe twenty people in your region — and they're already employed. Be honest about what's needed on day one versus what you'll train or sponsor later.

The fourth is burying the vehicle, phone and tool allowance. Plumbers compare offers on the full package, not the hourly. A $50/hr role with a fully fitted van, fuel card and a Friday knock-off at 2pm beats a $54/hr role where the tradie supplies their own ute and stock.

The fifth — and the most common — is treating the ad like a contract. The job description doesn't need every line of the employment agreement. It needs to make a good tradie picture themselves in the role, ringing you Monday morning. When you're ready to write yours, post a job on ATQ and you'll see prompts for each of these fields built into the form, which keeps the ad tight without you having to remember every detail.

One last thing: induction and the first fortnight

Even the best hire will cost you money in their first two weeks. Build in a structured induction: a ride-along day with you or a senior, a sit-down on your invoicing and compliance-certificate workflow, an introduction to your top ten regular clients, and clear authority on what they can quote on the spot versus what comes back to the office. Plumbers who feel trusted from day one stay; plumbers who feel watched go back to the market within six months.

Dave from Capalaba, by the way, hired again three months after the red-tag incident — a dual-ticketed bloke from Beenleigh, sighted every certificate, ran the QBCC search in front of him, and offered $58/hr with a fitted van. He's still there, runs the gas side of the business now, and Dave doesn't take a phone call about hot-water systems after 4pm anymore. Hiring well costs more upfront and pays back for years.