Do You Need Insurance and a Police Check to Pet Sit in Australia?
Short answer: there is no Commonwealth pet sitting licence in Australia and nothing forces a pet sitter to hold a police check. Insurance is more nuanced than it is usually reported, including by an earlier version of this guide — no law requires it if you visit clients' homes, but Victoria's mandatory boarding code sets a $10 million minimum and home boarding falls inside it. Your federal obligations are the ordinary small-business ones, such as an ABN and a business name.
The longer answer is where sitters get caught out. Regulation comes from state legislation layered with local council registration, permits and planning approval, and it usually turns on whether animals stay at your premises or the owner's. If you board pets at your own home, you very likely need to register with your council, and that part genuinely is the law.
This is general information, not legal advice. Requirements differ by state and council, and the figures below move every year. Before you take a booking that involves animals staying at your place, ring your own council and describe your exact service. That five-minute call is the only advice here that applies to everyone.
The question that actually decides it: whose house?
Take Victoria, where most of our sitters are. The obligation attaches to premises, not people. Section 45 of the Domestic Animals Act 1994 (Vic) is headed "Offence to conduct domestic animal business on unregistered premises" and reads:
"A person must not conduct a domestic animal business on a premises which is not registered for that purpose with the Council of the municipal district in which the business is conducted."
That premises framing is why boarding at your home and visiting a client's home are treated differently. But do not assume the line falls where you would like it to, because the statute is broader than most sitters expect. The same Act defines "board" as "the taking of custody or possession of the dog or cat for keeping, accommodation, care, training or feeding for fee or reward". Note what is missing: any requirement for an overnight stay. Care or feeding is enough, once you have taken custody or possession.
The definition of "domestic animal business" then does the real work. Paragraph (d) covers "an enterprise which trains or boards dogs ... or cats for the purpose of profit". Paragraph (e) covers "an enterprise which rears or keeps dogs ... or cats — (i) for the purpose of profit or sale; or (ii) for a fee or for exchange of services".
So where does drop-in work land? Honestly, we do not know, and we are not going to invent an answer. Boarding at your own home sits squarely inside this. Visiting a client's home to feed a cat or walk a dog is a genuine grey area: the offence is framed around your unregistered premises, while the definitions reach conduct that looks a lot like paid feeding and care.
Anyone who tells you confidently that drop-in visits are exempt is guessing. So is anyone who says walking a dog makes you a registrable business. Your council administers this. Ask them. All figures below are current as at August 2026.
Victoria and Melbourne, specifically
Victorian registration is annual and expires on 10 April, and it is made with the council for the district where the business operates. Same Act, same rules, three different prices:
- Whitehorse City Council charges $305.00 annually, sends renewal forms in early March for renewal by 10 April, and warns that a separate Council Planning Permit may also be needed depending on your planning zone.
- Boroondara charges $404 annually, with application or renewal due by 10 April, and does not refund the fee if your application is unsuccessful.
- City of Melbourne, per the government's ABLIS licence finder, charges $220.00 application plus $529.00 registration for 2025-26, then $529.00 renewal and $138.00 transfer.
One penalty number gets quoted a lot and deserves calm framing. Section 45's maximum is 600 penalty units for a body corporate and 164 in any other case, the limb that catches a sole trader. A Victorian penalty unit is $209.10 for 2026-27, so 164 units is $34,292.40.
That is a maximum available to a court for the worst possible case. It is not a standard fine and not an on-the-spot infringement: infringement penalties under Part 7B of the same Act are capped at 12 penalty units. Treat it as a reason to make the phone call, not a reason to panic.
Councils describe the same rule in different words
This is what convinced us the honest answer is "ask your council". Three Victorian councils, one Act, three descriptions of the registrable category:
- Whitehorse lists "Establishment boarding dogs or cats – overnight, doggy daycare and in-home care".
- Boroondara requires a permit for a "pet boarding establishment (including daycare or overnight boarding for cats or dogs)".
- Wellington Shire lists simply "Boarding establishment for dogs or cats", one of seven registrable types, and says all domestic animal businesses in the shire "must be registered annually and comply with the appropriate mandatory Code of Practice".
Only Whitehorse names in-home care. None of the three lists dog walking. If councils themselves describe the same statutory category in materially different terms, no blog post can hand you a rule that works across Victoria.
There is also a second approval layer people miss: animal business registration and planning approval are separate things, as Whitehorse says explicitly, and ABLIS notes that a home-based business must operate "within area restrictions outlined by council".
Other states
Queensland follows the same pattern under different names. The analogous approval is a Commercial Animal Premises Licence, issued by local council under the Animal Care and Protection Act 2001 (Qld), for premises where you "provide board, offer training, breed or sell animals". Premises-based, council-administered, boarding named, pet sitting and minding not named.
We have not verified the position in the other states and territories, so we are not going to describe it. Search your own address and activity on ABLIS, then confirm with your council.
Insurance: it depends entirely on whether you board
Correction, August 2026. An earlier version of this guide said no Australian regulation requires pet sitters to be insured, citing Marsh Australia. That is right for visiting sitters and wrong for boarding, and the distinction matters enough that we have rewritten the section rather than patched it.
If you visit clients' homes — drop-ins, dog walking, house sitting — we found nothing in Australian law requiring you to be insured. Marsh Australia puts it plainly: "While there currently is no regulation requiring pet sitters and boarders to have specific insurance in place when looking after a client's pet, Marsh recommends considering public liability insurance to help cover your business from the unexpected." In Victoria that holds for two independent reasons: the Code defines boarding as custody at a property other than the animal's normal residence, and section 45 bites on premises, so a sitter who keeps no registrable premises is outside both.
If you board in Victoria, including in your own home, the answer flips. The Code of Practice for the Operation of Boarding Establishments is made under section 59 of the Domestic Animals Act 1994 and is mandatory for every registered boarding business. Its introduction states that all boarding establishments must carry a minimum of $10,000,000 public liability insurance cover.
Three things make that bite harder than sitters expect:
- Home boarding counts. Clause 2.6 defines home boarding as "a maximum of 2 animals boarded at a place of residence occupied by the animal carer where no other form of boarding is occurring on the same property". Two dogs in your spare room is a boarding establishment, and Agriculture Victoria treats it as a business that must register as a Domestic Animal Business with its council.
- Home boarders are not exempt from it. The Code exempts home boarding establishments from a short, specific list of clauses. The insurance requirement is not on that list.
- Non-compliance is an offence. Section 63A makes it an offence to conduct a domestic animal business that does not comply with its code, at 246 penalty units for an individual — over $51,000 at the 2026-27 penalty unit value.
Councils vary in whether they check. Baw Baw Shire's boarding application asks outright whether you hold $10,000,000 public liability cover and wants a copy; other council forms we looked at, including Hume's and Monash's, do not mention insurance at all. The obligation applies either way — a council that does not ask has not waived anything.
So the honest summary for Victoria: visiting sitters are not required to be insured, and home boarders are. If you are not certain which you are, that is precisely the question to put to your council, and the answer turns on whether animals stay at your place.
Now the genuinely useful part. Public liability may not cover the animal you are minding, because standard broadform wordings exclude property in your care, custody or control. Chubb's Australian Broadform Liability wording, exclusion 3.14, is one sentence: "Property Damage to property owned by the Insured or in the Insured's care custody or control." There is no write-back.
That is not universal. BizCover's Broadform Public and Products Liability wording, exclusion 6.4, excludes the same category "other than ... property not owned by the Insured ... but temporarily in the Insured's care, custody or control, subject to the Insurer's maximum liability for such property damage being $500,000 for each and every Occurrence, or as otherwise stated in the Schedule, whichever is greater."
Neither wording mentions animals at all. So do not take any blog's word for how your policy treats the dog in your kitchen, including this one. Read your own PDS.
The clearest signal of where insurers think that risk sits is how the purpose-built products are built. Pet Business International Australia's pet sitting and boarding cover lists "Public Liability Insurance Up to $10,000,000 included" and, separately, "Accidents & Injuries to Animals $20,000 per incident ($60,000 in the annual aggregate)", plus loss of keys up to $4,000.
Ten million dollars and twenty thousand dollars are both real numbers on the same product, and only one of them responds when a dog in your care is injured. Find the animal-injury sublimit first; the headline liability figure is the marketing number. For how the cover types fit together, our earlier guide to pet sitter insurance goes deeper.
Police checks: what they are, and what they are not
An AFP National Police Certificate is "a summary of your offender history in Australia", covering disclosable court outcomes, criminal and traffic convictions, outstanding warrants and pending charges. It costs $56, or $113 where fingerprints are required, with a variable card surcharge on online payments.
An online name check usually produces a digital certificate within a few days, though some take longer, and you will need at least 100 points of identity documents. A fingerprint check goes by post and takes at least 15 working days, up to 30 business days.
Nothing in pet care law requires one. It is a trust signal, and a strong one, because owners handing over house keys are judging you on very little.
One correction worth making, because it costs people money. A Working with Children Check is a different product for a different purpose. Victoria Legal Aid states that "It is against the law to do child-related work without first getting a WWC Check", and it screens more broadly than a police certificate, considering "information from Victoria Police about suspected criminal activity, even if a person has not been charged with or convicted of an offence", along with professional disciplinary findings and family violence intervention orders. In Victoria it is administered by the Social Services Regulator and covers people working directly with children under 18.
Pet care is not child-related work. Do not buy one thinking it covers pet sitting, and do not treat it as a substitute in the other direction.
What to actually do this week
- Work out whether animals will ever stay at your premises. That single fact drives most of the rest.
- Ring your council and describe your exact service, rather than asking whether "pet sitting" needs a permit. Category names differ between councils, so a generic question gets a generic answer.
- If you board, budget the fee, diarise the 10 April renewal, and ask in the same call about your planning zone.
- If animals stay at your place in Victoria, treat $10,000,000 public liability as part of being registered, not as optional paperwork.
- When you buy insurance, read the animal-injury sublimit and the care, custody and control exclusion before the liability limit.
Sitters with us can upload a police check and an insurance certificate. Our team reviews the documents manually, and once verified, the matching badge appears on the public profile. More on our trust and safety page, or set up a sitter profile and add them as you go.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do you need a licence to pet sit in Australia?
There is no national pet sitting licence in Australia. What exists is state legislation plus local council registration, permits or planning approval, so the answer differs by where you live and what you do. The obligation generally attaches to premises where animals are boarded, so ask your own council.
Do I need to register with my council to pet sit from home?
If you board dogs or cats at your home for payment, you very likely do. In Victoria, section 45 of the Domestic Animals Act 1994 makes it an offence to conduct a domestic animal business on premises not registered with the council for that purpose, and registration expires annually on 10 April.
Do I need council registration if I only visit clients' homes?
This is genuinely unresolved and we will not pretend otherwise. The Victorian offence is framed around your unregistered premises, but the Act's definitions of "board" and "domestic animal business" reach paid care and feeding. Councils differ too: Whitehorse names "in-home care", Boroondara and Wellington Shire do not, and none lists dog walking. Ask your council about your specific service.
Is pet sitting insurance legally required in Australia?
It depends on whether animals stay at your place. For visiting sitters, dog walkers and house sitters, no — Marsh Australia states there is currently no regulation requiring specific insurance when looking after a client's pet. For boarding in Victoria, yes. The mandatory Code of Practice for the Operation of Boarding Establishments, made under the Domestic Animals Act 1994, requires all boarding establishments to carry a minimum of $10,000,000 public liability cover, and the Code counts home boarding — a maximum of two animals at your own residence, with no other boarding on the property — as a boarding establishment, which must register with its council. Section 63A makes non-compliance with a business code an offence.
I only board two dogs at home. Does the $10 million rule really apply to me?
On the face of the Code, yes. Clause 2.6 defines home boarding as a maximum of two animals at a residence occupied by the carer with no other boarding on the property, Part 10 exempts home boarding establishments from exactly five clauses — 6.2, 6.3, 7.2.1, 7.2.3 and 7.2.4 — and the insurance requirement in Part 1 is not among them. Whether your council checks for a certificate at registration varies — Baw Baw Shire's form asks for one, other councils' forms do not mention it — but the obligation does not depend on being asked. Confirm your own situation with your council.
Does public liability insurance cover a dog that is injured in my care?
Often not, and you have to check your own wording. Standard broadform policies exclude property in the insured's care, custody or control: Chubb's exclusion is flat with no write-back, while BizCover's writes back $500,000 for property temporarily in your care. Specialist pet sitting policies add a separate, much smaller animal-injury limit, which is the figure to compare.
Do I need a police check to be a pet sitter?
No law requires one for pet care work. An AFP National Police Certificate costs $56, or $113 with fingerprints, and an online name check usually returns a digital certificate within a few days. Most sitters get one because owners find it reassuring, not because they must.
Is a Working with Children Check the same as a police check?
No. A WWC Check is a separate screening process for child-related work, administered in Victoria by the Social Services Regulator, and it considers information a police certificate does not, including suspected criminal activity where no charge was laid. Pet care is not child-related work, so it is not the relevant document for pet sitting.