From today, roughly 250,000 Australians who deliver food and groceries for a living get a legal minimum wage for the first time. Buried inside the same order is a new insurance obligation that platforms, brokers and underwriters are still working out how to price.
The Fair Work Commission's on-demand delivery minimum standards order takes effect on Monday, 17 August. It is the first order of its kind the Commission has issued, and it was not forced on the industry through a contested case. The Transport Workers' Union, Uber Eats and DoorDash jointly asked the Commission to make it, submitting a combined proposal in late 2025 after years of informal cooperation between the union and the platforms.
Riders and drivers will be paid for "engaged time" — the period between accepting a delivery and dropping it off — at a minimum rate of between $31.30 and $32.00 an hour, depending on whether they're on a bike, e-bike, motorbike or in a car. That's comfortably above the $26.44 national minimum wage, and it's designed to work a bit like a taxi meter: the clock starts when the job is accepted and stops when it's done.
Alongside the pay floor, the order gives workers a formal dispute resolution process, representation rights, and a say in how platforms set their terms. TWU national secretary Michael Kaine called it "an absolute world-leading set of standards that we will build on over time" – that language signals this is a floor, not a ceiling.
The part of the order that should be getting more attention from the industry is the insurance requirement. Platforms must now fund personal accident cover for workers, offering what the Commission's order describes only as a "reasonable minimum level" of protection. No benefit amount, no waiting period, no policy structure has been prescribed. Riders remain on the hook for their own third-party vehicle insurance, but the accident cover sits with the platform - and it's enforceable through the Commission the moment it isn't provided.
Insurance Business reported earlier this month that this ambiguity is deliberate, at least for now - the order is explicitly interim, pending the outcome of two related cases covering last-mile parcel delivery and road transport contractors, which are still being argued before the Commission. The Australian Industry Group has told the Commission in those cases that insurance terms shouldn't be included in minimum standards orders at all, arguing it's a work health and safety matter already covered by Commonwealth and state law. If that argument succeeds, it could limit how far the Commission can go in mandating cover for the next wave of regulated workers.
None of this closes the bigger hole. Gig workers classified as independent contractors have generally sat outside workers' compensation schemes altogether, a gap Safe Work Australia has been trying to address through a national policy approach agreed with work health and safety ministers in October 2025. That framework says platforms are the appropriate party to meet workers' comp-style obligations, including premiums and return-to-work support — but it's a set of principles for state schemes to adopt, not binding law. The Commission's personal accident mandate only covers engaged time, and only for on-demand food and grocery delivery. It doesn't touch the period a rider spends waiting for a job, and it doesn't replace a workers' comp scheme.
A handful of insurers already have products built for this market. Chubb's group personal accident and sickness product, updated in a product disclosure statement last year, extends its definition of "employee" to contractors and self-employed people working on a policyholder's behalf - language platforms will need to test against the independent contractor status this order was carefully built to preserve. Smaller insurtechs have circled this space for years too: Coverhero's Hustle Cover, launched with two tiers for part-time and full-time gig workers, was designed specifically to plug gaps that standard accident and health products weren't built to cover.
Whether any of these products, as currently written, satisfy an obligation the Commission has deliberately left undefined is the question brokers advising platform clients will need answered well before the next order lands. GlobalData's estimates put Australia's personal accident and health insurance market on a growth path from roughly $35.7 billion to $42.8 billion in written premium by 2030 - a trajectory this order could nudge, if insurers move quickly enough to build something that fits.
Insurance Council of Australia chair Steve Johnston put the challenge to the sector plainly at the ICA's annual conference last October: "It's time for insurance to modernise, for products to be designed to meet the needs of customers in areas where traditional products simply can't respond. We need to innovate at pace." Monday gives that comment a live test case.
