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Best Practices 20 min read

How Often Is Compliance Training Required in Australia?

There is no single legal frequency for compliance training in Australia. A sourced table of every common course: what sets its frequency, what the interval actually is, who audits it, and where no legal frequency exists at all.

Barry Heath

Barry Heath

Head of Growth & Partnerships at SuperPath

Posted 1 September 2026
Compliance Training Mandatory Training WHS Training Training Records Australian Compliance LMS Learning Management System L&D Strategy

TL;DR: There is no single legal frequency for compliance training in Australia. A small number of courses have an interval written into law or a licence condition. Most do not, including general work health and safety training, which sets a currency test rather than a schedule. The table below shows which is which, with a source on every row.

Reviewed as at 1 September 2026. Every frequency below was checked against the regulator's or the legislator's own page on that date. This page is reviewed every six months and after any relevant regulatory change. Next scheduled review: March 2027.

Key takeaways

  • Annual is a convention, not a rule. No Australian law sets a general refresher frequency for compliance training, and the model work health and safety regulations do not contain one.
  • Model WHS Regulation 39 requires training to be suitable and adequate having regard to the risks "at the time the information, training or instruction is provided". That is a test of currency, not a schedule.
  • The courses with a frequency genuinely written into law are narrower than most training matrices assume: food safety supervisors (five years), Responsible Service of Alcohol in NSW (five years) and Victoria (three years), Queensland evacuation practice (not more than one year), financial adviser CPD (40 hours a year) and tax agent CPE (20 hours a year).
  • The annual CPR refresher that almost every organisation treats as law comes from a model code of practice, which says training "should" be refreshed annually. Codes of practice are admissible in court as evidence of what is reasonably practicable, which is a real obligation, but it is not the same as a regulation.
  • Where the law is silent, the frequency is being set by someone: your insurer, a client contract, an accreditation scheme, or a policy nobody has revisited in five years. Naming which one is what makes a cadence defensible.

Which compliance courses have a legally required frequency, and which do not?

Very few. Of the courses that appear on a typical Australian mandatory training matrix, only a handful have an interval written into an Act, a regulation or a licence condition. The rest are set by a code of practice, an accreditation standard, or the organisation itself. The table sorts them, with the legally mandated rows first.

Read the second column before the third. It is the column that tells you whether the number in the third column is something a regulator can prosecute you for missing, or something you chose.

Course or training item

What sets the frequency

Frequency

Who audits it

Source

Food safety supervisor (category one and two food businesses)

Law. Food Standards Code 3.2.2A and state food Acts

Every 5 years, and the training itself must be redone

NSW Food Authority, Queensland Health, state and local food regulators

NSW Food Authority

Responsible Service of Alcohol, NSW

Law. Liquor and Gaming NSW competency card scheme

Refresher training every 5 years. Repeating the initial course does not renew the card

Liquor and Gaming NSW

NSW Government

Responsible Service of Alcohol, Victoria

Law. Liquor Control Victoria

RSA Refresher course every 3 years

Liquor Control Victoria

vic.gov.au

Responsible Service of Alcohol, Queensland

Law, but no interval. Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation

No expiry and no mandatory refresher. Only statements of attainment issued before 2002 are invalid

Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation

Business Queensland

Evacuation practice and general evacuation instructions, Queensland buildings

Law. Building Fire Safety Regulation 2008 (Qld) ss 35, 43, 44

Evacuation practice and general instructions at intervals of not more than 1 year. First response instructions not more than 2 years

Queensland fire safety regulator

Queensland legislation

Financial adviser continuing professional development

Law. Corporations (Relevant Providers CPD Standard) Determination 2018

40 hours each year, reducible to 36 for part-time work with licensee consent

ASIC and your AFS licensee

ASIC

Tax agent and BAS agent continuing professional education

Law. Tax Agent Services regime, TPB policy

120 hours per 3-year registration for tax agents, 90 for BAS agents, minimum 20 hours each year

Tax Practitioners Board

TPB

High risk work licence (forklift, EWP, rigging, scaffolding)

Law. Model WHS Regulations licensing provisions

Licence renewed every 5 years. Retraining and reassessment only if the licence lapses more than 12 months

State and territory WHS regulators

SafeWork NSW

General construction induction (white card)

Law. Model WHS Regulations, cl 316

No expiry. Voided by two consecutive years out of construction work, after which the training must be redone

State and territory WHS regulators

SafeWork NSW

Working With Children Check (currency of the check, not training)

Law. State child protection legislation

Clearance valid 5 years in both NSW and Victoria

NSW Office of the Children's Guardian, Victorian Government

NSW OCG

NDIS Worker Screening Check (currency of the check, not training)

Law. NDIS Worker Screening rules

Clearance expires every 5 years

NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission and state screening units

NDIS Commission

First aid qualification

Code of practice. Model Code of Practice: First aid in the workplace

"should be renewed every three years". A should, not a must

WHS regulator, and a court weighing what was reasonably practicable

WorkSafe Queensland

CPR

Code of practice. Same code

"Refresher training in CPR should be carried out annually"

WHS regulator, and a court weighing what was reasonably practicable

SafeWork NSW

Emergency evacuation drills outside Queensland

Standard. AS 3745-2010, as referenced in regulator guidance

Recommended at least annually. Not law in its own right

WHS regulator

WorkSafe Victoria

Aged care worker core training (person-centred care, dementia, medical emergencies, Code of Conduct)

Standard. Strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards, Outcome 2.9, Action 2.9.6

"regularly". No interval is prescribed

Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission

ACQSC

NDIS Worker Orientation Module ("Quality, Safety and You")

Standard. NDIS Commission guidance

Providers "should include the module within their induction process". No renewal cycle is published

NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission

NDIS Workforce Capability

Health service mandatory training

Standard. NSQHS Standards second edition, Actions 1.19 to 1.22

The organisation defines and monitors its own program. No interval in the standard

Accrediting agencies on behalf of the ACSQHC

ACSQHC

Child safe training

Standard. Victorian Child Safe Standard 8, NSW Child Safe Standard 7

"ongoing" and "continual education and training". No interval

Commission for Children and Young People (Vic), Office of the Children's Guardian (NSW)

CCYP Victoria

General WHS induction and safety training

Law, no frequency. Model WHS Regulation 39

None. Training must be suitable and adequate for the risks at the time it is provided

State and territory WHS regulators

Queensland legislation

Hazardous manual tasks and manual handling

Law, no frequency. Model WHS Regulation 39 duty applies

None prescribed anywhere in the model WHS regulations

State and territory WHS regulators

Queensland legislation

Crystalline silica training

Law, no frequency. Model WHS Regulation 529CD, commenced 1 September 2024

Required once. No refresher interval. Workers trained before 1 September 2024 do not have to repeat it. Records kept for 5 years after the worker leaves

SafeWork NSW, WorkSafe Queensland and other WHS regulators

SafeWork NSW

Confined space entry

Law, no frequency. Model WHS Regulation 76

No refresher interval. Training records must be kept for 2 years

State and territory WHS regulators

WorkSafe WA

Asbestos awareness

Law, no frequency. Model WHS Regulation 445

No refresher interval. Records kept while the work continues and for five years after the worker finishes

State and territory WHS regulators

SafeWork NSW

Psychosocial hazards and mental health at work

Code of practice, no frequency. Model Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work

None. Refresher training is named as good practice with no interval attached

State and territory WHS regulators

WorkSafe Queensland

Sexual harassment prevention, respect at work, bullying and discrimination

Law, no frequency. Positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act, AHRC Guidelines

No interval. The AHRC says one-off induction training is ineffective unless "periodically reinforced"

Australian Human Rights Commission, plus WHS regulators

AHRC

Sexual harassment prevention plan, Queensland

Law, no training frequency. WHS (Sexual Harassment) Amendment Regulation 2024 (Qld), in force 1 March 2025

No training frequency at all. The plan must be reviewed every 3 years, or sooner after a report

WorkSafe Queensland

Queensland legislation

AML/CTF training

Law, no frequency. AML/CTF Act s 26F(4)(e) and AML/CTF Rules s 5-9(2)

Initial plus ongoing. AUSTRAC publishes example cadences of 6 to 12 months and 12 months, expressly flagged as examples only

AUSTRAC

AUSTRAC

Privacy and handling personal information

Law, no frequency. Privacy Act, APP 1, and OAIC guidance

None. The OAIC asks whether refresher training occurs "on a regular basis"

Office of the Australian Information Commissioner

OAIC

Health and safety representative refresher

Law, an entitlement not a duty. WHS Act HSR training provisions

An HSR is entitled to a one day refresher course annually. The duty is to allow it, not to compel it

State and territory WHS regulators

WorkSafe WA

Code of conduct

Your policy. No Australian instrument sets a frequency outside aged care, where Action 2.9.6 says "regularly"

None for most employers

Your board, your insurer, your clients

ACQSC

Two rows on that table are worth pausing on, because they are the ones most often reported incorrectly. Crystalline silica training carries no refresher interval anywhere in the model regulations, despite a three year figure circulating widely. And the "every three years" attached to Queensland's sexual harassment reforms is a review cycle for the prevention plan, not a training cycle. Neither regulator says otherwise on its own page.

Why is there no single answer to how often compliance training is required?

Because Australian training obligations are written as duties, not schedules. The dominant instrument, model WHS Regulation 39, requires training to be suitable and adequate having regard to the nature of the work, the risks "at the time the information, training or instruction is provided", and the control measures in place. It asks whether the training is right for today's risk, not whether twelve months have elapsed.

That drafting choice is deliberate, and once you see it you cannot unsee it. A schedule can be satisfied by a person who completed a module eleven months ago and has since changed roles, moved sites, and started using different equipment. A currency test cannot. The regulator's question is whether this worker, doing this work, with these controls, has training that is suitable and adequate now.

The convention filled the gap. Somewhere in most organisations there is a training matrix with "Annual" in the frequency column for every row, inherited from a predecessor, an auditor's template, or a vendor's default settings. Nobody chose it, so nobody can defend it, and it quietly sets two things at once: the residual risk you carry on the courses that should be more frequent, and the licence and administration bill you pay on the courses that should not be annual at all.

There is a second reason the answer fragments, and it is geographic. According to Safe Work Australia, the model laws have been implemented in all jurisdictions except Victoria. So a national employer is not applying one set of rules with local variations. It is applying the model WHS framework in seven jurisdictions and the Victorian Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 in the eighth, alongside state licensing schemes that genuinely diverge. Responsible Service of Alcohol is the cleanest illustration: five years in NSW, three years in Victoria, and no mandatory refresher at all in Queensland.

Where is a training frequency actually written into law?

In three narrow places: state licensing and certification schemes, professional registration regimes, and a small number of building and fire safety regulations. These are the rows where a date genuinely matters, because missing it invalidates a licence, a certificate or a registration rather than simply weakening your risk position.

State licensing and certification. The food safety supervisor certificate is the clearest case. The NSW Food Authority states that certificates expire five years from the date of issue and that holders "are required to renew their training at an approved RTO". The interval is the same in Queensland, Victoria and the ACT, underpinned by the national Food Standards Code, so this is one of the rare items where a single national number is defensible. Responsible Service of Alcohol is the counter-example: the same underlying subject, and three different answers across three states.

Professional registration. According to ASIC, financial advisers must complete a minimum of 40 hours of CPD each year, reducible to 36 hours for part-time work with the licensee's written consent, under a determination made under the Corporations Act. According to the Tax Practitioners Board, tax agents must complete 120 hours of continuing professional education within a three year registration period and BAS agents 90 hours, with a minimum of 20 hours each year in both cases. These are hour quotas rather than course refreshers, which is a different shape of obligation and needs a different kind of record.

Building and fire safety. Queensland is the standout. The Building Fire Safety Regulation 2008 requires that an evacuation of the building is carried out in accordance with the fire and evacuation plan "at intervals of not more than 1 year", that general evacuation instructions are given to each person working in the building at intervals of not more than one year, and that first response evacuation instructions are given at intervals of not more than two years. If you operate buildings in Queensland, that is a legally binding annual cycle. If you operate the same buildings in NSW or Victoria, the annual drill is a recommendation drawn from AS 3745-2010, not a statutory interval.

Worth separating from all of the above: licence renewal is not retraining. A high risk work licence runs for five years, but SafeWork NSW is explicit that renewal requires you to have maintained competency, not to redo the course. Retraining and reassessment are triggered only by letting the licence lapse for more than twelve months. The white card goes further in the other direction: it has no expiry date at all, and is voided only by two consecutive years out of construction work, at which point the training must be done again. A training matrix that schedules a white card refresher every three years is scheduling work that no law requires.

Where does the frequency come from a sector standard instead?

From codes of practice and accreditation standards, which carry real weight without being regulations. This is the largest and least understood group, and it is where almost every "everyone knows it is annual" belief actually originates. The distinction matters because the enforcement mechanism is different: a code is evidence of what is reasonably practicable, not a provision you breach.

Work through CPR, because it is the perfect worked example. Almost every Australian organisation treats an annual CPR refresher as a legal requirement. It is not one. The number comes from the model Code of Practice on first aid in the workplace, which states that "Refresher training in CPR should be carried out annually and first aid qualifications should be renewed every three years". That is a "should", in a code, not a "must", in a regulation.

That does not make it optional in any practical sense. As the SafeWork NSW version of the code puts it, "Codes of practice are admissible in court proceedings under the WHS Act and WHS Regulation", and courts may rely on a code in determining what is reasonably practicable. So if you deviate from the annual CPR cadence, you have not broken a rule, but you have taken on the burden of explaining why your alternative was equally effective. In practice most organisations should simply follow it. The point is knowing that you are following guidance you could justify departing from, rather than a statute you cannot.

Here is how to check any other course yourself, in three steps. It takes about ten minutes per course and it is the single most useful thing an L and D or WHS lead can do to a training matrix.

  1. Find the Act or regulation first. Search the regulator's own site, not a training provider's. If the obligation exists, it will be phrased as a duty to provide training, and you are looking for whether any interval appears alongside it. If none does, you have your answer for the legal layer.
  2. Then find the code of practice or standard. This is where the numbers usually live. Read the verb. "Must" in a regulation is law. "Should" in a code is guidance with evidentiary weight. "Regularly" or "ongoing" in an accreditation standard is a requirement to have a defensible answer, not a number.
  3. Then check who audits it and what they ask for. An accreditation surveyor, a WHS inspector and an insurer's risk engineer ask different questions about the same course. The frequency you need is the one that satisfies whoever actually turns up.

Run that on the aged care standards and the result is instructive. The strengthened Aged Care Quality Standards, in force since 1 November 2025 alongside the new Aged Care Act, require under Action 2.9.6 that "All aged care workers regularly receive competency-based training in relation to core matters", listing person-centred care, culturally safe and trauma aware care, dementia care, responding to medical emergencies, and the Code of Conduct. The word is "regularly". There is no interval anywhere in Standard 2. What Action 2.9.4 does require is a training system that ensures workers have the necessary competencies, and Action 2.9.5 requires the provider to regularly review its effectiveness. In other words, the Commission is asking you to own the cadence and show your reasoning, which is a harder test than an annual tick, not an easier one. If you run aged care or NDIS services, the operational side of that, keeping training, rostering and compliance in step, is covered in how to connect training, rostering and compliance for aged care and NDIS teams.

The same pattern holds in health. The NSQHS Standards require a health service organisation to implement a mandatory training program to meet its requirements and to monitor the workforce's participation in training. They do not say annually. The near-universal annual mandatory training cycle in Australian health services is an organisational and jurisdictional policy choice sitting on top of the standard, not the standard itself.

Electrical testing and tagging is the second worked example, and it inverts the usual assumption. Most people believe AS/NZS 3760 sets the law. In Queensland the intervals are actually regulated, and WorkSafe Queensland states that the requirements of the electrical safety regulation "takes precedence over the Australian standard AS/NZS 3760", with intervals ranging from three months for construction equipment to five years for office equipment protected by a safety switch. In NSW, by contrast, SafeWork NSW sets no interval at all and points to the standard as guidance, with the legal trigger being whether equipment is used in a hostile operating environment. Same equipment, same national standard, two different legal positions.

Where is the frequency really your insurer, your client contract or your own policy?

Everywhere else, which is most of the matrix. Code of conduct, bullying and harassment, EEO, privacy, cyber awareness, modern slavery, whistleblower and ethics training all sit here for the overwhelming majority of Australian employers. There is a duty to train. There is no interval. Something else is choosing the number, and that something is usually one of four things.

Your insurer or broker. Management liability, professional indemnity and workers compensation renewals increasingly ask what mandatory training you run and how often. The cadence in your policy schedule is not law, but it is contractual, and it is the one most likely to be checked.

A client contract or tender requirement. Prequalification schemes and head contractor requirements routinely specify annual inductions or site-specific refreshers. If you work in construction, resources, government or aged care supply chains, some of your frequencies were written by a procurement team, not a parliament.

An accreditation or funding body. NDIS, aged care, NSQHS, RTO and quality certification schemes all require you to have a training system and to evidence competence. None of them hands you a number.

Nobody. A row in a spreadsheet that says Annual because it always has.

AUSTRAC is worth studying here, because it models the honest version of this better than almost any other Australian regulator. The AML/CTF Act and Rules require both initial and ongoing training for personnel who perform AML/CTF functions, and AUSTRAC states plainly that "The frequency and extent of ongoing training will depend on functions the person performs and the ML/TF risks". It then publishes worked examples, expressly flagged as examples only: compliance officers and senior management every six to twelve months, customer-facing personnel every twelve months, third-party vendors at onboarding and at contract renewal. That is a regulator saying what good looks like without pretending it is a rule. If you are a reporting entity, note that the reformed program obligations started on 31 March 2026 for existing reporting entities, and that real estate professionals, lawyers, conveyancers, accountants, dealers in precious stones and metals, trust and company service providers and certain virtual asset businesses have been regulated since 1 July 2026, so a large number of Australian organisations are building their first AML/CTF training plan right now.

One more source of honest pressure that belongs in this bucket: evidence that one-off training does not work. According to the Australian Human Rights Commission's Guidelines for complying with the positive duty, traditional approaches such as one-off training at induction "have proven ineffective at eliminating relevant unlawful conduct, if they are not also periodically reinforced with ongoing opportunities for workers to build and apply their knowledge and skills". According to the Commission's Time for respect survey, published in November 2022, "Almost 2 in 5 people (38%) agreed or somewhat agreed that they attended training on sexual harassment at, or organised by, their organisation." Neither statement is a frequency. Both are reasons to have one.

How do state and territory differences change your cadence?

They change it in three specific ways: which instrument applies at all, whether a plan or document is mandatory, and what the licensing intervals are. For a national employer, generalising from the model WHS laws is the most common way a training matrix goes quietly wrong.

Which instrument applies. Victoria is not a model WHS jurisdiction. Its obligation to provide information, instruction and training sits in section 21 of the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, and it sets no frequency either, but the regulations underneath it are Victorian. Since 1 December 2025 those include the Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025, which create duties to identify psychosocial hazards and review controls. Western Australia has its own Work Health and Safety Act 2020 and regulations that reproduce the model structure. NSW remade its regulation entirely: SafeWork NSW confirms the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025 commenced on 22 August 2025, so any internal document citing 2017 clause numbers is now citing a repealed instrument.

Whether a plan is mandatory. Queensland requires a written sexual harassment prevention plan. WorkSafe Queensland states that from 1 March 2025 businesses must prepare and implement a prevention plan to manage identified risks of sexual harassment and sex or gender-based harassment at work. Victoria does not: WorkSafe Victoria describes prevention plans as encouraged but not mandatory. Same national conversation, two different compliance artefacts. Note also what the Queensland regulation does not do. It imposes no training requirement and no training frequency. The three year cycle it sets is for reviewing the plan.

What the licensing intervals are. RSA at five years in NSW, three in Victoria and no mandatory refresher in Queensland. Test and tag intervals prescribed in Queensland and left to risk assessment in NSW. Evacuation practice mandated annually in Queensland and recommended annually by a standard everywhere else.

The practical consequence for a national employer is that the matrix needs a jurisdiction column, and the safe default is not "apply the strictest state everywhere". Sometimes that is right and cheap. Sometimes it commits you to retraining thousands of people on a cycle that only ever applied to one state, which is exactly the kind of inherited cost this article is about.

How do you set a defensible cadence when the law is silent?

Set it by risk, write down why, and record the source of every interval next to the interval itself. A cadence is defensible when you can tell an auditor which rows come from law, which come from a code or standard, and which are your own decision, and can point to the risk reasoning behind the last group.

In practice, four inputs decide the interval for the courses that have no legal frequency:

  • Severity of the hazard. Work at heights, confined spaces and hazardous chemicals justify shorter cycles than a values-based module, regardless of what the regulations say about records.
  • Rate of change in the underlying content. If the law, the policy, the procedure or the equipment changes, the training is stale on that date, not twelve months later. Privacy, AML/CTF and WHS regulation have all moved substantially in the last twenty-four months.
  • Turnover and role movement. In a workforce with high mobility, role change is a bigger driver of training gaps than elapsed time. Reassigning on role change catches what an annual sweep misses.
  • What your own data tells you. Incidents, near misses, complaints, audit findings and assessment scores are the only inputs that are actually about your organisation.

The other half of a defensible cadence is triggers, not just intervals. A schedule alone will always lag. The reassignment events that matter are a change in the law, a change in your policy or procedure, a change in equipment or process, a change in the worker's role or site, and a signal from incident or complaint data. Most organisations have the interval and none of the triggers, which is why training can be one hundred per cent complete and still not current.

The paragraph to copy into your training policy

This is written as policy language rather than marketing copy, so it survives being pasted into a real document. Replace the organisation name and adjust the review period if your governance cycle differs.

Refresher frequency. Where a law, regulation, licence condition or funding agreement sets a frequency for a mandatory training item, [Organisation] adopts that frequency. Where a code of practice or an accreditation standard recommends a frequency, [Organisation] adopts it unless a documented risk assessment supports an alternative that achieves an equivalent or better outcome, in which case the reasoning is recorded. Where no external source sets a frequency, the interval is determined by risk assessment and recorded in the training matrix, having regard to the severity of the hazard, the rate of change in the underlying law, policy, procedure or equipment, workforce turnover and role movement, and the organisation's incident, complaint and audit data. Training is reassigned before its recorded expiry date, and out of cycle whenever the underlying law, policy, procedure or equipment changes, a worker changes role or work location, or incident, complaint or audit data indicates a gap. For each item, the training matrix records the training source, the interval, the source of that interval, whether that source is a legal requirement or an internal decision, and the date the interval was last reviewed. The matrix is reviewed at least every twelve months and after any relevant regulatory change.

If you copy nothing else, copy the second-last sentence. Recording whether an interval is a legal requirement or an internal decision is the single change that turns a training matrix from a list into an argument.

How do you evidence currency rather than completion?

By storing an expiry date and a status against each person and each item, not just a completion date. Completion answers "did this happen". Currency answers "is it valid today, for this person, in this role", which is the question a regulator, an auditor or an insurer actually asks. The two are different data structures, and most training records only hold the first.

Retention is the part most organisations get wrong in the other direction, by assuming the Fair Work seven year rule covers training. It does not. That rule covers time and wages records. The retention periods that genuinely apply to training records are hazard specific and come from the WHS regulations: two years for confined spaces training, and for asbestos and crystalline silica, records kept while the worker is doing the work and for five years after they finish or leave. AUSTRAC takes a different approach again, requiring records reasonably necessary to demonstrate compliance and suggesting a training register that shows who completed what, when, and when further training is due.

What an auditor asks for, in our experience of sitting in these conversations, is rarely a completion percentage. It is a named cohort, a date range, and evidence: every person who performs this task, their current status, the date each was last trained, the version of the content they saw, and what happened to the ones who did not complete. If your system cannot produce that in a few minutes, the cadence question is academic. This is the practical ceiling that shared drives and tracker spreadsheets hit, and we have written about exactly where that line falls in can you use SharePoint as an LMS.

Three fields turn a completion record into a currency record: the expiry date, the version of the content that was completed, and the reason the interval is what it is. The third is the one nobody stores, and it is the one that saves you when the interval is challenged.

How do you automate reassignment so the cadence maintains itself?

By setting the expiry rule once on the course, letting the platform reassign on expiry, and letting your HRIS drive who is in scope. A cadence that depends on someone remembering to re-enrol people every twelve months is not a cadence, it is a recurring reminder that eventually gets missed during a busy quarter.

The mechanics that matter are unglamorous. Each course carries a validity period and a renewal rule, so completion sets an expiry date rather than closing the record. Reassignment happens automatically before that date, with escalation to the manager if it lapses. Role, site and employment changes flow in from the HRIS, so a warehouse worker who moves to a forklift role picks up the licence-linked requirements without anyone raising a ticket. The HRIS remains the source of truth for people data; the LMS is the system of record for what they were trained on and whether it is still valid, and it writes completion and compliance status back.

That is what a learning management system is for, and it is the reason the cadence conversation eventually becomes a systems conversation. In SuperPath, expiry and reassignment are configured on the course and driven by workflows, and the compliance view in reporting is built around currency by cohort rather than completion totals, so the question "who is out of date on this, right now" has a one screen answer.

The content side matters too, because a cadence you cannot supply is just a plan. SuperPath includes a library of 15 Australian compliance courses in the platform at AUD $5 per user per month, covering most of the courses named in the table above: work health and safety, code of conduct, bullying and harassment, privacy, data and cyber security, anti-discrimination and EEO, whistleblower, modern slavery, child safety, psychological safety and Respect at Work positive duty among them. The AI Course Builder is included in the same price, which is what you need for the rows the library does not cover, the ones that come from your own procedures rather than from general law. There is no separate content subscription and no separate authoring licence, which is worth checking against any quote you are comparing, since content and authoring are the two line items most often priced as add-ons. If you are building that comparison, our Australian LMS cost guide sets out the pricing models, and our comparison of 11 Australian LMS platforms on real pricing shows which ones publish a figure at all.

One honest caveat. Automating reassignment makes a cadence reliable; it does not make it correct. If the interval in the system is inherited rather than reasoned, automation will maintain the wrong number very efficiently. Do the audit of the table above first, then automate what survives it.

About the author

Barry Heath is Head of Growth and Partnerships at SuperPath, an Australian all-inclusive learning management system for mid-to-large organisations. He spent seven years on the founding team at Go1 and has worked with Australian L and D, HR and compliance teams on training systems for more than a decade. He writes about the operational side of compliance training: how it is assigned, tracked, evidenced and renewed.

Sources

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Frequently asked questions

No interval is prescribed. Model WHS Regulation 39 requires training to be suitable and adequate having regard to the risks at the time it is provided, which is a test of currency rather than a schedule. Retrain when the work, the risks, the controls or the worker's role change, and document why you chose the interval you did.

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