Australia's New Minimum Standards for Gig Delivery Workers Start August 17: What's Covered and What Isn't

Australia has its first legally enforceable minimum standards order for gig delivery work. The Fair Work Commission’s Interim On-Demand Delivery Employee-like Worker Minimum Standards Order takes effect on August 17, 2026, and it sets a floor on pay and a set of other protections for the people who deliver food, drinks, alcohol, and groceries through an app.

The workers covered by the order are still independent contractors. Australian law built a category for exactly this situation, and knowing which category applies to you matters more than the headline pay figure.

”Employee-like worker” is a distinct status, not a reclassification

Changes made to the Fair Work Act created a category the law calls “regulated workers,” which includes “employee-like workers”: people who do platform-arranged work such as on-demand delivery without being formally employed by the platform. That status sits between employee and ordinary independent contractor. It does not turn anyone into an employee. A courier working under this order still invoices as a contractor, still lodges a self-employed tax return, and still carries their own ABN. What changes is that the digital platform now has to meet a legislated floor on pay and a set of other conditions, on top of the contractor relationship that was already there.

That is a different mechanism from a reclassification. New Jersey’s gig-driver rules, which BillyPaid covered when they were finalized, move certain platform drivers into employee status outright. Australia’s order does the opposite. It leaves contractor status in place and builds a floor underneath it, and it is the first minimum standards order the Fair Work Commission has ever issued.

What the order covers

The order applies to on-demand delivery work booked through an app or website: food, drinks, alcohol, and groceries picked up from a business and delivered to a customer. It excludes any delivery made using a vehicle with a carrying capacity over one tonne, which keeps most bicycle, e-bike, scooter, motorcycle, and standard car delivery work inside its scope and leaves larger commercial delivery work outside it.

Inside that scope, the order sets a minimum hourly rate of between AUD 31.30 and AUD 32.00. It also sets standards covering a gig worker information statement, vehicle repairs and registration expenses, record-keeping, insurance, consultation before a platform makes a significant change, a platform feedback forum, the right to unpaid time away, workplace delegate rights, and a dispute resolution process. The obligations sit with the digital platform operator as much as with the worker, which is why the order names both.

What this order does not touch

If a tradie or freelancer also takes on direct client work, quoting a job, invoicing it, and chasing payment, none of that sits inside this order. The Fair Work Commission’s minimum standards apply specifically to platform-mediated delivery work booked through an app. A fence repair quoted to a homeowner, a logo designed for a local shop, or a weekend of bookkeeping billed to a client runs on the terms the freelancer and client agreed to, with no rate floor and no platform operator involved.

Aspect	Employee-like gig delivery worker	Direct client work
Covered by the order	Yes, if booked through an app or website	No
Minimum pay	AUD 31.30 to 32.00 per hour, set by the FWC	Whatever you quote and invoice
Who sets the terms	The order, plus the platform operator	You and your client
Legal status	Still an independent contractor	Still an independent contractor

That distinction matters most for anyone whose income comes from both sides. The delivery income now carries a legislated pay floor and comes wrapped in the platform’s own record-keeping. The direct client income still depends on the freelancer’s own invoice, exactly as it always has.

A BillyPaid invoice keeps that side of the business running the way it needs to: numbered, dated, and with a payable link, regardless of what the delivery apps are now required to pay on the other side of the week.