Available Across Victoria – Contact Us Now!
Available Across Victoria – Contact Us Now!
Three quotes, thirteen dollars apart.
They landed within a fortnight of each other, all for the same warehouse in Dandenong South, all for the same twelve hour overnight shift, five nights a week. One came back at $58 an hour. One at $52. The third at $45, with a friendly note saying they could start Monday. None of the three documents explained why they were different, and the operations manager holding them had no way to tell whether he was looking at three fair prices, or two fair prices and one problem.
That is the actual question sitting underneath security guard cost in Melbourne. Not what the average rate is. Whether the number in front of you can be delivered for that money at all.
The good news is that you can work this out yourself, in about ten minutes, using figures that are public and free to check. Before you compare on-site security officers in Melbourne from any provider, it helps to know what sits inside the rate.
An hourly rate looks like one number. It is four.
The wage. What the officer is paid for that specific hour. This is set by law, and it changes depending on when the hour falls.
The on-costs. Superannuation, WorkCover premium, payroll tax where the business is above the threshold, annual leave, sick leave and public holiday cover. These sit on top of the wage and the provider cannot opt out of them.
The site overhead. Uniform, licensing, training, recruitment, supervision, rostering, reporting technology, and public liability insurance. Also the cost of covering the shift when the rostered officer calls in sick at 9pm.
The margin. What the provider keeps
Most buyers assume the site drives the price. A high risk site must cost more than a quiet one. In practice the biggest single variable is not the site at all.
The same officer, doing the same work, at the same warehouse, costs a very different amount depending on which day it is.
Under Australian workplace law, a Sunday shift is paid at double the ordinary rate. A public holiday is two and a half times. Night work carries a loading on top of the base rate. A quiet Sunday overnight at a low risk site can legitimately cost more than a Tuesday afternoon at a difficult one.
This matters for two reasons. It explains most of the variation between honest quotes. And it is where contracts go wrong, because a rate agreed on a weekday basis produces an invoice nobody expected after the Christmas period.
For multi-site operators, this is worth modelling before signing anything. A roster that looks affordable across a standard week can shift by twenty per cent or more once weekend and public holiday cover is priced properly.
Here is the part almost nobody publishes.
Every security officer working for a contracted provider in Australia is covered by the Security Services Industry Award 2020 (MA000016), maintained by the Fair Work Commission. The award sets the minimum a provider can legally pay. It is public, it is free to read, and it applies to every provider quoting you.
From the first full pay period on or after 1 July 2026, the minimum rates for a Security Officer Level 1, the entry classification for a licensed officer doing basic security duties, are:
Base rate: $28.42 per hour
Ordinary hours are 38 per week, with overtime beginning after 7.6 hours in a shift. Higher classifications pay more. A Level 2 officer, which typically covers additional responsibilities such as first aid or alarm monitoring, starts at $29.24.
INDUSTRY REGULATION — SUPERANNUATION GUARANTEE
On top of the wage, employers must pay the Superannuation Guarantee. The rate is 12% of ordinary time earnings and has been since 1 July 2025. From 1 July 2026, Payday Super rules also require those contributions to reach the officer’s fund within seven business days of payday, which removes the cash flow gap some operators used to run on.
Source: Australian Taxation OfficeWage plus super gives you something useful: the absolute minimum cost of one hour of one officer’s time, before the provider has bought a uniform, insured anybody, or made a single dollar. The quote floor test This is the number to check your quotes against.
The quote floor test
This is the number to check your quotes against.
| Shift type | Award rate | Plus 12% super | Absolute labour floor |
| Weekday day, permanent | $28.42 | $3.41 | $31.83 |
| Weekday night, permanent | $32.68 | $3.92 | $36.61 |
| Weekday day, casual | $35.53 | $4.26 | $39.79 |
| Saturday | $42.63 | $5.12 | $47.75 |
| Sunday | $56.84 | $6.82 | $63.66 |
| Public holiday | $71.05 | $8.53 | $79.58 |
Based on Security Services Industry Award 2020 Level 1 rates effective 1 July 2026, plus the 12% Superannuation Guarantee
Find the row matching the shift you are being quoted for. Compare it to the hourly charge-out rate on the page.
The $45 quote from the opening was for a twelve hour overnight shift, five nights a week. The relevant row is weekday night, at $36.61. The provider had roughly $8.39 an hour to cover WorkCover, payroll tax, public liability insurance, uniform, licensing, training, supervision, rostering, reporting, leave cover, recruitment and profit.
That is not a good deal. That is a sum that does not close.
There is no clever operating model that gets a company underneath a legislated wage floor. When a quote sits at or below the relevant row, there are only a few explanations, and none
of them are good for the client:
The officer is being paid below the award
The last one is the most common and the hardest to spot. The company you signed with is not always the company that employs the person walking your site at 3am. This is common enough that security workers themselves discuss it openly on industry forums, where contracted front-desk and site officers are frequently employed by whichever firm holds the contract, not the business whose building it is.
If the arrangement later unravels, the disruption lands on your site. Underpayment matters ethically first. It also creates a provider who cannot retain officers, which is why some sites see a different face every week.
HONEST CAVEAT
Two things to keep in mind, because the table is a floor and not a fair price.
Superannuation is payable on ordinary time earnings, so overtime hours sit outside it. The way the 25% casual loading interacts with penalty multipliers can vary by calculation method, which makes the casual rows conservative rather than exact.
More importantly, a quote sitting exactly on the floor should worry you as much as one below it. The floor contains no insurance, no supervision, no vehicle, no reporting, and no margin. A viable quote has to sit meaningfully above it.
Two quotes at the same headline rate can mean very different things. The difference is >usually in what has been left out.
Ask every provider to confirm, in writing, whether the rate includes licensing and training costs, public liability insurance, uniform and equipment, supervision and site visits, incident reporting and documentation, travel or callout minimums, and the minimum billable shift length.
Minimum shift length catches people out most often. A four hour minimum on a two hour job doubles the real cost.
Ask all five of every provider and the quotes become comparable in about a day.
Victoria makes this genuinely easy, and most buyers do not know the tools exist.
INDUSTRY REGULATION — VICTORIAN LICENSING
Security work in Victoria is regulated under the Private Security Act 2004, administered by the Licensing and Regulation Division of Victoria Police. Two separate licences matter. The business must hold a private security business licence. Each officer must hold an individual licence covering the activity they perform, such as security guard or crowd controller, with sub-activities like unarmed guard or control room operator. Both are listed on the Victoria Police public register, which is searchable by name or licence number and free to use.
If a provider hesitates to give you their business licence number, that is your answer.
Then ask for a current certificate of currency for public liability insurance and check the expiry date rather than the cover amount alone. Finally, ask directly whether any of the work will be subcontracted, and get the answer in writing.
For reference, TeamSignal Security is a full-service security provider that holds Victorian private security business licence 903-210-30S, and has operated in Victoria since 2003.
This is the section most security companies leave out.
For a large share of Melbourne businesses that ask for a security guard, a dedicated on-site officer is the wrong spend.
If your risk window is 6pm to 6am on an empty site, an on-site officer is twelve paid hours a
night watching nothing happen. At the floor rates above, that is a substantial weekly cost for presence alone. A schedule of mobile patrol visits in Melbourne across the same window covers the same risk for a fraction of it, and produces the same time-stamped record your insurer will ask for.
An on-site officer earns its cost when the risk needs a person present rather than a person passing: active retail floors with customer contact, healthcare settings, sites with continuous vehicle or contractor movement, venues managing crowds, or anywhere access has to be controlled in real time.
If your concern is specifically what happens when the alarm activates, neither option may be the right purchase. Alarm response cover in Melbourne puts a licensed officer on site only when something actually happens, which for many businesses is the cheaper and safer answer.
The honest version is that the right question is not how much a guard costs. It is whether a guard is what your site needs.
The three quotes on that Dandenong desk were not equally real. One of them could not have been delivered at the price offered without something going wrong somewhere, and the operations manager had no way to see it because nobody had ever shown him where to look.
The award rate is where to look. It is public, it updates every July, and it puts a hard number underneath every quote you will ever receive. You do not need to know the security industry to use it. You need to know which shift you are buying and how to read one row of a table.
Everything above the floor is a real conversation about coverage, technology, supervision and risk. Everything below it is a conversation about something else.
If you want that first conversation, our team can walk your site and tell you honestly whether an on-site officer, a patrol schedule, or alarm response cover is the right fit. You can see the full range of security services we run across Victoria, or request a no-obligation quote and we will price the roster properly, penalty rates and all.
Melbourne rates vary with the shift far more than with the site. The legal minimum an employer can pay a Level 1 officer is $28.42 an hour on a weekday from 1 July 2026, rising to $56.84 on a Sunday and $71.05 on a public holiday under the Security Services Industry Award 2020. Add 12% superannuation and you have the absolute floor a provider can operate on. A viable charge-out rate has to sit meaningfully above that to cover insurance, supervision, equipment and margin.
Yes, and the difference is large. Night shifts attract a 15% loading, Saturdays are paid at 1.5 times the base rate, Sundays at double, and public holidays at two and a half times. This is set by the award, not by the provider. Any quote that gives you a single flat rate covering all days should be queried, because either the weekend hours are being priced correctly and hidden inside an average, or they are not being paid correctly at all.
Victoria licenses under the Private Security Act 2004, administered by the Licensing and Regulation Division of Victoria Police. Individual officers hold a licence covering specific activities such as security guard, crowd controller, bodyguard or investigator, with sub-activities including unarmed guard and control room operator. The business must separately hold a private security business licence. Both appear on the Victoria Police public register, which is free to search. Note that Victoria does not use the Class 1A and 2A numbering you may see quoted, which belongs to New South Wales.
Not always, and this is worth confirming in writing. Most established providers build licensing, training and public liability insurance into the hourly rate, but some itemise them separately or exclude them. Ask for a current certificate of currency for public liability cover and check the expiry date. Also confirm whether uniform, equipment, supervision visits and incident reporting are inside the rate or billed on top
Usually, and for many sites it covers the same risk. An on-site officer is paid for every hour they are present, whether anything happens or not. A patrol schedule buys a set number of documented visits across the same window at a fraction of the cost. If your site is empty overnight and the concern is deterrence and early detection, patrols are often the better purchase. If you need access controlled in real time or a person present during trading, an officer is what the job requires.
At minimum it should itemise the rate for each shift type rather than giving one blended figure, state the minimum billable shift, specify how public holidays are treated, and set out how and when rates change. Award rates are reviewed annually and take effect from the first full pay period on or after 1 July, so a contract should say clearly whether rates adjust at that point and by what mechanism. Contracts that are silent on annual adjustment tend to produce difficult conversations in the second year.
Normalise them before you compare. Ask each provider for the same five things: permanent or casual engagement, the full penalty rate schedule, the minimum billable shift, whether any work is subcontracted, and an itemised list of what is inside the rate. Then check each shift type against the award floor for that shift. Quotes that looked twenty per cent apart often turn out to be closer than that, and the outlier usually stops looking like a bargain once the exclusions are visible.
Commercial clients and property managers commonly require a minimum level of public liability cover, and the figure required will usually be set by your own insurer or head lease rather than by legislation. Ask your broker what your site requires, then ask the provider for a certificate of currency showing at least that amount and a valid expiry date. Confirm the policy covers the specific activities being performed on your site.
Ask the question directly during procurement and get the answer in writing, because subcontracting is common and is not always disclosed. Once the contract is running, officers can be asked to produce their individual Victorian security licence, which you can check against the Victoria Police public register. If you are seeing frequent turnover of officers on a site that should have consistent coverage, that is often the first visible symptom of subcontracted or underpaid labour.
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