By Greg Allan, tradesman and creator of Data First Coaching
What work health and safety duties does a painting business owner have in Australia?
As the owner of a painting business, you are treated in law as a PCBU, a person conducting a business or undertaking. The WHS Act gives you a primary duty of care to eliminate risks on your jobs, or if that is not reasonably practicable, to minimise them so far as is reasonably practicable. According to SafeWork NSW's spray painting and powder coating code, that duty sits under WHS Act section 19, and it does not switch off because a job is small, quick, or a simple touch-up.
If your business is a company, the officers (directors) carry a separate duty of due diligence under section 27, to take reasonable steps to make sure the business has and uses the right processes to manage risk. Your painters, including subbies and apprentices, carry their own worker duty under section 28 to take reasonable care and follow reasonable instructions, according to the model code of practice for spray painting and powder coating. You also have a duty to consult with your crew on matters that affect them, whether that is cutting in on a two storey exterior, spraying a commercial fit-out, or doing prep on an older weatherboard before a repaint.
This is general information, not legal, tax or employment advice. Check your own situation with the body named here or a qualified adviser.
Who counts as a PCBU, and what does that mean for a solo painter or subbies?
If you run the painting business yourself, work as a sole trader, or operate in partnership, you are still a PCBU, and the same duties apply. The Safe Work Australia model code says a PCBU includes a company, an unincorporated body or association, and a sole trader or self-employed person, and that individuals in a partnership running the business will individually and collectively be a PCBU.
That matters on commercial and strata jobs, where a painter might be running their own crew while also subcontracting a second painter for the feature wall, the scaffold work, or a colour consultation on an interior fit-out. Each of you can be a PCBU for your own part of the job, which is why the duty to consult, cooperate and coordinate with other duty holders exists, so the builder, the strata manager and every painter on site are working from the same picture of the risk, not assuming someone else has it covered.
What duties cover spraying, lead paint and hazardous chemicals on a repaint?
You have a duty to manage the risks of the products your crew uses every day, including the hazardous chemicals in primer, two-pack paints and solvents, and the lead in old paint layers on pre-renovation repaints. WorkSafe Queensland says “Paints containing isocyanates should be considered high risk and you must take precautions to protect workers from exposure,” which applies directly to the two-pack and spray primers many painters use on new build and commercial work.
Where a job involves lead paint, often on older homes and strata buildings being prepped for a repaint, Safe Work Australia's guidance on inorganic lead says “As the PCBU, you must provide health monitoring for all workers involved in ‘lead risk work’.” Sanding, scraping and dust from coats of old lead paint can put that duty in play well before the new colour goes on. SafeWork SA's code also notes that your paint supplier, as the manufacturer or importer, carries duties around correct labelling of hazardous chemicals, which is part of why the safety data sheet from the supplier matters as much as the invoice.
Keeping the chemical register, the health monitoring dates and which job used which product in a folder that gets updated from memory is where this starts to drift. An AI agent, which is simply software that does a job the way you do it, with your own prices, wording and rules, can hold that paperwork against the job it belongs to as the job happens, rather than someone trying to reconstruct it at the end of the month. That is a data first way of handling compliance paperwork: start from the job and product data the business already has, not from memory.
What about falls, scaffold and working at height on exterior and roof painting jobs?
You have a duty to eliminate the risk of falls where you can, and minimise it so far as is reasonably practicable where you cannot, which covers most exterior, roof painting and scaffold work a painting business does. According to the Safe Work Australia falls code, this duty sits alongside a duty on other people at the workplace, visitors included, to take reasonable care for their own safety and follow reasonable instructions from you.
Weather is part of this picture too. A wet deck, a windy scaffold, or a roof painting job pushed on despite the forecast all feed back into the same duty to manage the risk, not just on the day you book the job but on the day you actually send the crew up. The same AI agent idea applies here: instead of a scaffold or height checklist living on a clipboard that is easy to skip when a job is running late, the check can sit inside the job record itself, in your own words and your own sequence, so the next step will not proceed until it is done.
Where do painting businesses usually lose track of this, and what does it cost?
Most painting businesses do not ignore WHS duties on purpose. The gap usually sits in how the records are kept: a safety data sheet folder that is out of date, a health monitoring date nobody wrote down against the right worker, or a scaffold inspection that lives in someone's memory rather than against the job it belongs to.
The cost of that gap often shows up later, not at the time. A defect claim on an old repaint, a worker raising a lead exposure issue years after a strata job, or a regulator visit on a commercial site, all ask the same question: which records tie to which job, which crew, which product. A business running on memory usually has to piece that together after the fact, which costs time it did not budget for and can leave real gaps in the story.
Where can you check the current rules?
- Spray painting and powder coating code of practice, SafeWork NSW: PCBU, officer and worker duties for spray and chemical work
- Model code of practice for spray painting and powder coating, Safe Work Australia: who is a PCBU, manual task and noise duties
- Spray painting and powder coating code, July 2020, Safe Work Australia: consultation duties and worker duties
- How to manage and control asbestos code, Safe Work Australia: asbestos identification and removal duties before demolition or refurbishment
- Spray painting and powder coating code, SafeWork SA: consultation across workers, contractors and subbies, and chemical labelling duties
- Spray painting hazard page, WorkSafe Queensland: isocyanate risk and health monitoring
- Inorganic lead WHS duties, Safe Work Australia: lead risk work and health monitoring duties
- Managing the risk of falls code, Safe Work Australia: duties covering scaffold, roofs and height work
Most states and territories run harmonised WHS laws, but the regulator publishing guidance differs, as above. If your painting business works across New Zealand, WorkSafe New Zealand runs a separate scheme, and that is the body to check directly.
How does Data First Coaching approach this?
Data First Coaching, created by Greg Allan, does not start a conversation about WHS or compliance with a checklist. It starts with the owner's own job, crew and product data through the Trade Business Intelligence, to see where the real gap sits, whether that is a record that never gets updated, a duty that falls on the wrong person, or a job type where the risk is consistently underestimated. From there, the how, including which AI agents to build and where they sit in the job, is worked through inside the Academy, with members. The Academy is for painting business owners who are open minded, innovative and willing to share, because the Trade Business Intelligence is powered by every member, for every member.
Looking for a business coach who starts from your numbers? Painter Business Coach or every answer for painters.
