Hiring a Regular House Cleaner: Insurance, ABN and Who Pays if They Are Hurt

A household booking its first weekly or fortnightly clean usually compares three things: the price, the availability and the reviews. Those are reasonable measures, but none of them answers the questions that matter on the day something goes wrong. A regular house cleaner spends hours each month inside the home, often unsupervised, using water, chemicals and ladders on hard floors. The paperwork behind that arrangement comes down to three questions, and most households ask none of them before the first visit.

1. Insurance. If the cleaner damages something, or someone else is injured because of the work, whose policy responds?
2. ABN. Does the cleaner’s Australian Business Number settle whether they are a contractor, and does the household owe super?
3. Injury. If the cleaner slips on a wet floor and is hurt, who pays?

The answers depend less on the cleaner than on the arrangement, and the arrangement is set by how the cleaner is engaged. That is the right place to start.

Agency, platform or independent cleaner

A household can engage a regular cleaner in roughly three ways, and each one moves the employment and insurance questions to a different place.

What the table shows, and what a price comparison tends to hide, is where the risk sits. An agency’s price usually includes the cost of employing and insuring its staff. An independent cleaner’s price may be lower partly because some of that cost is not being carried by anyone, and the gap only becomes visible when there is a claim. A platform sits in between, and the only reliable guide to which side it falls on is its own terms of service, which a household should read before the first booking rather than after an incident.

This does not rank the three models. A well-insured independent cleaner who has worked for the same clients for years can be a stronger choice than an agency with high staff turnover. The point is that the price, read on its own, excludes the insurance position, and the insurance position is the part that costs the most when it is missing.

The general habit applies here as it does with any trade working inside the home. This site’s guide to what to check before hiring an electrician sets out the same principle for a licensed trade: confirm credentials before someone starts work in your house, not after.

Public liability: ask for the certificate

Public liability insurance is the cover that responds when the cleaner’s work causes damage to the household’s property, or injury to a third party. A cleaner who knocks a television off a cabinet, or leaves a floor wet so that a visitor slips, would typically be the kind of event this cover is designed for.

What public liability excludes matters as much as what it includes: it does not cover the cleaner’s own injury. That exclusion is the subject of the next section, and it is the gap most households do not know is there.

The practical step is to ask for a certificate of currency. This is a short document from the insurer confirming that a policy exists, who holds it, and the period it covers. Three details on it deserve attention:

• The name of the insured. It should match the business or person doing the cleaning.
• The expiry date. A certificate that expired last month is evidence that cover existed, not that it exists now. A household with a long-term cleaner should ask for the renewed certificate each year.
• The type of cover. It should say public liability.

This is the same document a household should read when hiring other trades. This site’s guide to hiring a removalist and comparing quotes explains how to read another trade’s insurance before moving day, and the approach transfers directly.

If the cleaner is hurt: the workers compensation gap

Workers compensation covers a worker who is injured at work. Where the cleaner is employed by an agency, the agency is the employer and its workers compensation policy is the one that responds. Where the cleaner is independent, the position is less clear, and this is where a household should be most careful.

The figures in this section are drawn from New South Wales, where the regulator, the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA), publishes its exemptions in plain terms. They illustrate how one scheme works. They are not a guide to any other state.

Under SIRA’s published exemptions, an employer does not need to hold a workers compensation policy if it pays $7,500 or less in wages in a financial year and meets the other conditions SIRA sets out. If a worker of an exempt employer is injured and makes a claim, the employer contacts SIRA on 13 74 72, the claim is managed by icare, and the employer pays a $175 administration fee.

That figure is narrower than it looks. The $7,500 threshold tells an employer whether it must hold a policy; it does not, on its own, answer the prior question of whether a household engaging a cleaner is an employer at all. That depends on the arrangement: how the cleaner is engaged, who controls the work, whether the cleaner runs their own business and serves other clients, and the other factors the law takes into account. This guide does not reach a conclusion on that question for any household, and neither should a household reach one by assumption.

Other states run different workers compensation schemes, with their own thresholds and rules. A household outside New South Wales should check with its own state’s workers compensation regulator.

Two further checks apply in every state:

1. The household’s home and contents policy. Whether the policy responds when someone working in the home is injured, and on what terms, is set out in the policy wording. The insurer can confirm it before the first clean.
2. The cleaner’s own cover. An independent cleaner may hold personal accident or income protection insurance for their own injuries. It is a reasonable question to ask, and the answer tells a household whether the gap is covered from the cleaner’s side.

ABN and super

Many households treat an ABN as settling the matter: the cleaner has an ABN, so the cleaner is a contractor, so there is nothing more to consider. That reasoning is incomplete. The Australian Taxation Office does not treat an ABN as decisive. It looks at the whole relationship between the parties when deciding whether someone is an employee or a contractor.

On superannuation specifically, the ATO has a rule that applies directly to households. A domestic or private worker, meaning someone whose work relates to your home, household or family (the ATO gives a housekeeper as an example), is eligible for the super guarantee only if they work for you for more than 30 hours in a week. The threshold applies regardless of how much the worker is paid.

The ATO’s own worked example makes the scale clear: a housekeeper who works 25 hours a week is not owed super under this rule.

Set against a typical regular clean, the comparison is straightforward.

Most regular cleans fall well under the threshold. A household engaging someone for many hours each week, or combining cleaning with other household work such as childcare or cooking, should check the ATO’s guidance against its own arrangement before assuming the threshold has not been reached.

Keys, alarms and trust

A regular clean usually means the cleaner has access to the home when nobody is there. The arrangements around that access are worth settling in advance, because they are awkward to negotiate after a problem.

• Keys. Who holds the key, how many copies exist, and where it is kept between visits. Some households use a lockbox; others hand over a key directly. Either way, the arrangement should be agreed in advance.
• Alarm codes. If the cleaner needs a code, a separate user code that can be cancelled is preferable to sharing the household’s own.
• A lost key. Who pays to rekey or replace locks if a key is lost. An agency may have a policy on this; an independent cleaner may not have considered it.
• References. For an independent cleaner, a reference from a current client is more informative than one from a past client, since it shows the arrangement is working now.

Agencies often address these points in their standard terms. With an independent cleaner, they are matters for the household to raise.

What a regular clean covers, in writing

The most common source of friction in a regular cleaning arrangement is not insurance or tax. It is a difference in expectations about what the clean includes. A short written agreement, even an email exchange, resolves most of it before it starts.

The items worth recording are:

The supplies line is easy to overlook and has more consequences than it appears. A cleaner who uses the household’s products is working with whatever is under the sink. A cleaner who brings their own may use products the household would not choose, particularly where someone in the home has allergies or sensitivities. Neither is wrong, but it should be agreed.

The exclusions line matters for a similar reason. Ovens, inside windows and linen changes are the tasks most often assumed by one side and not the other. Writing them down, whether as included or excluded, removes the assumption.

Put the clean, and the cover, in writing

A regular house cleaner is, for most households, a small and low-risk arrangement. The risk is concentrated in a few places that a price comparison does not show. How the cleaner is engaged, through an agency, a platform or independently, determines who employs them and who holds the insurance. A certificate of currency confirms that public liability cover exists and is current, but it does not cover the cleaner’s own injury. Workers compensation is where the gap sits: in New South Wales, SIRA’s exemptions show how one scheme treats small employers, but whether a household is an employer depends on the arrangement, and other states run different schemes. An ABN does not settle contractor status, and the ATO’s super rule for domestic workers applies only above 30 hours a week, which most regular cleans do not approach.

The checks themselves take very little time: ask for the certificate, read the platform’s terms or the agency’s, check the home and contents policy, and agree the tasks, supplies and cancellation terms in writing. Done before the first visit, they leave the household with a clear record of who is responsible for what.

Sources: Exemptions from holding a workers compensation policy, SIRA NSW (https://www.sira.nsw.gov.au/workers-compensation/exemptions); Work out if you have to pay super, Australian Taxation Office (https://www.ato.gov.au/businesses-and-organisations/super-for-employers/work-out-if-you-have-to-pay-super)