EPA Victoria has put a price on the gap between telling WorkSafe you are about to remove asbestos and being able to show the EPA what happened to the waste.
As part of the EPA-led Illegal Waste Dumping Taskforce, EPA Victoria and WorkSafe shared intelligence that so far has produced $71,225 in fines across seven asbestos removalists. The pattern was the same in each case: the contractor lodged the mandatory WorkSafe notification that removal was about to start, then could not produce a matching EPA Waste Tracker record for the asbestos waste.
Illegal dumping was not established. The fines are for incomplete tracking. That is the detail operators should sit with. Victoria does not need a roadside pile of fibro to open an enforcement file. A WorkSafe notice with no Waste Tracker trail is enough.
What the law already requires
Under Victorian law, asbestos removalists must give WorkSafe at least five days' notice before starting work. They must then record all asbestos waste in EPA's Waste Tracker as soon as it is created, and keep that material tracked through to lawful disposal at a licensed facility.
Those are not optional admin steps. They are the chain of custody that lets the regulator follow hazardous waste from the building face to the tip. Break the chain and the EPA's ability to account for toxic waste collapses, even if the bags ultimately went somewhere legitimate.
Who was fined
The operators named so far are:
- All Over Azzy Pty Ltd
- Melbourne District Demolition Pty Ltd
- Remove It Pty Ltd
- Australia Wide Asbestos Removal Encapsulation Pty Ltd
- JB Civildirect Pty Ltd
- YA Comms Pty Ltd
- Bayside Demolition Pty Ltd
EPA executive director of operations Rachel Gualano framed the joint operation as putting the industry on notice. Once WorkSafe has a removal notification, officers look for a matching Waste Tracker record for that site. As these removalists discovered, that cross-check is simple to run and expensive to fail.
What this means if you remove asbestos in Victoria
Treat the WorkSafe five-day notice and the Waste Tracker entry as one job, not two. Create the Waste Tracker record as soon as the waste is created, not at the end of the week when someone remembers the paperwork. Reconcile dockets against Tracker and against the WorkSafe notification the same day. If you subcontract transport or disposal, your contracts still need to leave you able to show the EPA a complete trail, because the notice is yours.
This sits alongside the Renex civil penalty story: Victoria is enforcing the gate between regulated asbestos waste and the wider environment through records as hard as through contested disposal. Destination control and tracking are the same compliance problem viewed from opposite ends of the truck.
The bigger signal
Cross-agency matching is not a one-off blitz. Once WorkSafe and EPA are routinely sharing removal notices against Tracker records, every notified job becomes a searchable compliance event. Operators who only ever worried about the tip face now have a second test: can you prove the waste existed in the system the moment it left the building?
$71,225 across seven companies is not the theoretical maximum. It is the published cost of failing a check that takes the regulator minutes. Build your process so the Tracker record is as automatic as the WorkSafe notice, or expect that check to find you.
Sources
- Inside State Government, 2 June 2026 — EPA Victoria issues $70,000 in fines over missing asbestos records
- Star Weekly (Northern), June 2026 — Asbestos removalists fined
- Inside Waste, 3 June 2026 — Incomplete Waste Tracker records leads to $70k in fines