Right-to-work record retention in Australia
Reviewed by Mellow Editorial Team, HR & payroll content team
Employers in Australia must check and record every employee's right to work before they start work — and keep evidence of that check. Failing to do so exposes the business to civil and criminal penalties under the Migration Act 1958.
Why the obligation exists
The Migration Act makes it unlawful to allow a person to work, or to refer a person for work, if you know or are reckless about whether they hold a valid visa permitting that work. "Reckless" is the critical word. If you never checked, you may still be liable because you took the risk without verifying. The penalty regime is serious: civil penalties run into hundreds of thousands of dollars for companies, and there are separate criminal provisions for deliberate breaches. The practical defence against a recklessness finding is a timely, documented check.
What a compliant check looks like
The check must happen before the employee commences work — not during onboarding paperwork, not at the end of the first week. There are two accepted methods.
Visa Entitlement Verification Online (VEVO). The Department of Home Affairs operates VEVO as a free, real-time verification tool. With the worker's consent, you enter their passport or ImmiCard details and receive a record of their current visa conditions, including any work restrictions or hour limits. Save or print the VEVO result with the date and time of the search clearly visible.
Document inspection. Where the person is an Australian or New Zealand citizen, sighting a current Australian passport, a certificate of Australian citizenship, or a New Zealand passport (for NZ citizens exercising their work rights) is sufficient. Take a clear copy of the identity page. Sighting the document in person is the standard; accepting a scan sent via email is generally acceptable for remote hires provided you are satisfied the document is genuine, though your process should be consistent and documented.
The Home Affairs guidance recommends you record: the date of the check, what document or VEVO result you sighted, the worker's name and date of birth, and the name of the person who conducted the check.
How long to keep the records
There is no single statute that prescribes a specific retention period for right-to-work records. However, the practical guidance from Home Affairs and consistent legal advice is to keep the records for the full duration of employment plus at least two years after the employment ends. That aligns with the broader employment record-keeping obligation under the Fair Work Regulations, which requires most employment records to be kept for seven years. Using seven years as your default retention period for right-to-work evidence is the safest approach and simplifies your document management — one rule for the whole employment file.
If you used VEVO, the search result should be stored as a PDF or screenshot alongside the employee's payroll record. If you took a document copy, store it securely with access limited to HR or payroll staff.
Ongoing checks for visa holders
A single pre-employment check is not always enough. Visas expire. Conditions change. A student visa holder's work-hour entitlement during semester is different from the entitlement during a study break. If you employ workers on temporary visas, you need a process to monitor expiry dates and re-verify before the current visa lapses.
VEVO allows employers to set up monitoring alerts for certain visa holders. This is worth using if you have a material number of temporary visa employees. At minimum, diary the visa expiry date and prompt a re-check in the weeks before it falls due.
There is no legal requirement to re-check Australian or New Zealand citizens unless you have a specific reason to doubt their status.
Connecting right-to-work records to payroll
Right-to-work status is not just a compliance checkbox separate from payroll — it has direct payroll consequences. A student visa with an hours restriction means the worker cannot exceed that limit in a given fortnight. A working holiday maker visa (subclass 417 or 462) has different tax withholding rules: they are taxed at a flat rate on every dollar of income rather than through the standard progressive PAYG schedule. If your VEVO check reveals a visa subclass, confirm the correct tax treatment with your payroll system before the first pay run.
Payroll records and right-to-work records belong in the same employment file, kept to the same seven-year standard. If Home Affairs or the Fair Work Ombudsman ever audits you, being able to produce both together demonstrates a coherent, deliberate compliance process rather than a patchwork of disconnected steps.
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