Australia has one national barbering qualification, and it is SHB30516 Certificate III in Barbering. If you take one thing from this guide, take that code, because a surprising amount of what is published about Australian barbering quotes qualification codes that have not existed since 2016.
The old prefixes are dead. SIH was hairdressing and SIB was beauty, and both were folded into the SHB Hairdressing and Beauty Services training package a decade ago. If a course page is still advertising an SIH or SIB code, that page has not been updated in a very long time and you should read everything else on it with the same suspicion.
Do you need a licence?
There is no national occupational licence for barbers in Australia. But the popular claim that Australia is completely deregulated is not right either, and the exception is the largest state.
New South Wales has an occupational statute. Section 3 of the Hairdressers Act 2003 says an individual must not act as a hairdresser for fee, gain or reward unless the individual is qualified, with a maximum penalty of 20 penalty units. Section 4 defines qualified as having been awarded an authorised qualification by a registered training organisation, or having had competencies approved through an apprenticeship determination, or having held a licence under the old Shops and Industries Act 1962.
Two things about that Act are genuinely unresolved, and we would rather tell you than pretend.
The Act never defines hairdressing. There is no mention of barbering, shaving, beards or men’s hair anywhere in it. Whether a barber who only cuts and shaves is acting as a hairdresser for the purposes of section 3 is not settled in anything we could find. Separately, the Act defines an authorised qualification as the Certificate III in Hairdressing. It does not name the Certificate III in Barbering, and we found no regulation or determination extending it. New South Wales government business guidance names SHB30416 Certificate III in Hairdressing as the qualification. If you intend to work as a barber in New South Wales without a hairdressing certificate, put the question to NSW Fair Trading in writing rather than relying on any website, this one included.
Elsewhere the position is about premises rather than people:
- Northern Territory: registration is mandatory. Every hairdressing, beauty therapy and body art business must be registered, at a fee of $96 for hairdressing only. The NT’s definition of hairdressing services expressly includes shaving.
- Victoria: premises must be registered with the local council under the Public Health and Wellbeing Act 2008.
- Queensland: no licence. Hairdressing is a personal appearance service but not a higher risk one, because higher risk is confined to procedures where releasing blood or bodily fluid is an expected result. A shave is not that. Councils may require notification within 30 days under local law.
- Western Australia: the Hairdressing Establishment Regulations 1972 were repealed with currency ending 4 June 2024, on the basis that hairdressing is a low public health risk. Non statutory Department of Health guidelines apply instead.
- South Australia, Tasmania and the ACT: no licence and no registration for barbering. ACT Health states directly that hairdressers do not need a licence. General public health duties and departmental guidelines apply, and skin penetration work is regulated separately in each.
On razors, New South Wales council guidance states that cut throat razors with non changeable blades are not permitted in commercial hairdressing establishments, because of blood borne virus risk. In practice that means single use replaceable blades. That is guidance rather than a statute we could point to, so treat it as the expected standard rather than a citable rule.
What the qualification contains
SHB30516 Certificate III in Barbering is made up of 26 units of competency: 21 core and 5 elective, of which 3 come from a listed group and 2 can come from that list, from elsewhere in the SHB package, or from another current training package.
For comparison, SHB30416 Certificate III in Hairdressing has 28 units: 21 core and 7 elective, where you take either the general hairdressing group or the men’s hairdressing group and then four more.
Nominal hours are 812 to 855 for barbering and 1,026 to 1,080 for hairdressing. One caution: those hours are not in the national training package. The package sets the units and the packaging rules, and each state sets nominal hours for its own funding purposes. The figures above are Victoria’s. Queensland uses its own nominal hours to calculate the apprentice contribution at a regulated $1.60 per nominal hour.
Both qualifications are current as at August 2026, and both are inside a review being run by Service and Creative Skills Australia. A replacement is widely expected, but no endorsement date has been published by the skills council itself, so we are not going to quote one. Check training.gov.au before you enrol if the version number matters to you.
The apprenticeship route
An Australian Apprenticeship in barbering runs three years full time, or up to six years part time. You sign a legally binding training contract with your employer. The employer must contact an Apprentice Connect Australia Provider within 14 days and should enrol you with an RTO or TAFE within three months. Your pay is set by the Hair and Beauty Industry Award, MA000005, and apprentices must be employed full time or part time, never casually.
Administration is split between two levels of government, which is why the paperwork feels heavier than it should. The Commonwealth contracts the Apprentice Connect Australia Provider network. The state or territory training authority registers and regulates the training contract itself, which in Victoria means the VRQA, in Tasmania Skills Tasmania, and in South Australia the South Australian Skills Commission.
Actual durations vary by provider: about two and a half to three years at Bendigo TAFE, three years at North Metro TAFE in Western Australia, two to two and a half years at CIT in the ACT, and 42 months part time at TAFE SA.
There is a non apprenticeship route. TAFE NSW admits people with relevant work experience, and Chisholm, Victoria University, Melbourne Polytechnic and North Metro TAFE all run institutional full time streams. Note North Metro TAFE’s position, though, which is that trade certification is only available through the apprenticeship pathway.
Check the RTO, not just the course
The qualification can only be delivered by a Registered Training Organisation. The New South Wales Act itself requires the qualification to be awarded by one.
Checking takes two minutes and almost nobody does it. Go to training.gov.au, the national register, and search the provider’s name or RTO code. Confirm two separate things: that the registration is current rather than expired or cancelled, and that SHB30516 appears on that RTO’s scope of registration. Being a registered RTO does not entitle a provider to deliver every qualification. It has to be on their scope.
Queensland and Victoria both run state skills gateways that list approved providers for SHB30516 and flag which are government funded, which is a useful cross check.
What it costs
Published 2026 figures from the institutions themselves. Subsidised means the state government has funded a place; concession is the reduced rate for eligible students; full fee is what you pay with no subsidy.
| Provider | Subsidised | Concession | Full fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| CIT, ACT | $1,600 apprentice | $350 school based | $9,320 |
| TasTAFE (apprentices only) | $2,200 | $410 | $11,630 |
| South Metropolitan TAFE, WA | $3,097.75 including resource fee | $1,672.75 | Not listed |
| Victoria University | $3,240 | $648 | $13,200 |
| Chisholm TAFE, Victoria | $4,560 | $912 | $11,760 |
| TAFE Queensland | $1.60 per nominal hour for apprentices | Not published | $13,130 |
| TAFE SA | $2,828 to $3,491 per semester | $1,740 to $2,148 per semester | Not listed |
Materials and kit sit on top nearly everywhere. Chisholm adds $1,980 in materials plus a student services fee and around $300 of tools. Victoria University adds up to $1,571. CIT adds a tool kit of $600 to $1,910.
Fee free schemes, and which ones actually apply
This is where a lot of money is won or lost, and where the marketing is loosest.
Queensland genuinely covers barbering. The Free Apprenticeships for Under 25s programme includes SHB30516 and waives the $1.60 per hour training fee for apprentices and trainees under 25 employed under a Queensland training contract.
New South Wales covers it too. The state pays the $2,000 apprenticeship student fee for Smart and Skilled funded apprenticeships. You must commence before 30 June 2027, and there is a limit of three fee free apprenticeships per person.
Victoria does not. Barbering is not a Free TAFE course in Victoria: the state skills gateway records it as not free, Victoria University states plainly that the course is not free, and Chisholm publishes real subsidised and concession tuition. One provider page displays a Free TAFE banner over an empty fee table, which we take to be a template error. If you are relying on it, ring them.
Western Australia does not. Neither barbering nor hairdressing appears on the 2026 Lower Fees, Local Skills list, so the capped tuition rates do not apply.
On Commonwealth Fee Free TAFE, we could not verify the priority sector list and no provider we checked claims it for barbering. Do not assume it applies.
Private RTOs
Most private RTOs do not publish a total course fee, which makes honest comparison difficult. Demi International, one of the larger providers, publishes only a $250 enrolment fee and a $950 barber kit, and states the course is not available for government funding. The Barber Academy in Queensland publishes around $1,688 under Queensland’s Career Start funding, plus textbooks, with a payment plan of $249 down and $40 a month for students aged 25 and over.
The best proxy for a true unsubsidised price is the TAFE full fee rate, which runs $9,320 to $13,200. If a private RTO will not give you a total figure in writing before you enrol, that is information.
What to ask before you enrol
Ask for the RTO code and check the scope of registration on training.gov.au yourself. Ask whether the course leads to SHB30516 or to a statement of attainment in some of its units, because those are very different outcomes. Ask what the total cost is including materials, kit and student services fees. Ask which funding you are eligible for and get the answer in writing. And if you are in New South Wales, ask the provider how their qualification sits with the Hairdressers Act 2003.
Find a course
Every provider listed on this site has been checked against training.gov.au or a state training authority before it went live. Browse the verified barbering courses in Australia, or sort every course on the site by distance from you on the courses near me page.
Qualification versions, fees and funding lists change, and the barbering qualification is currently under national review. Everything here was checked in August 2026 against training.gov.au training package documents, state training authorities and the providers’ own published fees. Where a source could not be verified we have said so instead of filling the gap.
Courses in Australia
The guide above covers how the route works. These are the schools we have checked in Australia, each one verified against an awarding body or training register before it went live.