General information only. This is not legal advice. Get advice on your own contract from an employment lawyer before you act.
If you are weighing a move to a competitor, the practical question is which parts of your contract still bite. Right now, post-employment restraints in Australia start from a position of being unenforceable unless the employer can justify them, and whether one holds depends on the facts and on the state. Separately, the government has announced a proposed ban on non-compete clauses for lower and middle income workers, intended to start on 1 January 2027 if legislation passes, and it has said the ban would apply only to new or varied contracts. Non-solicitation and confidentiality clauses are not part of that announced ban.
I am a recruiter, not a lawyer. This is general information to help you ask better questions, not legal advice. Before you act on any of it, get advice from an employment lawyer about your own contract.
What applies now, and what the government proposes
Keep these two things separate, because the reform is announced policy, not law yet.
| What applies now | What the government proposes from 2027 |
|---|---|
| Post-employment restraints are generally presumed unenforceable as against public policy, and only hold where the employer can show the clause goes no further than reasonably necessary to protect a legitimate interest. | A ban on non-compete clauses for workers earning under the Fair Work high-income threshold, intended to commence 1 January 2027, subject to legislation passing Parliament. |
| Whether a clause is enforceable is fact-specific and depends on the state. NSW has its own Restraints of Trade Act 1976. | The government has said it would apply only to new or varied contracts. This should be rechecked against the Bill when it is introduced. |
| Non-solicitation and confidentiality obligations are governed by current law and can be enforceable where reasonable. | The final treatment of non-solicitation, confidentiality and related clauses should be read from the enacted legislation, not from the policy announcement. |
As at mid-2026 no Bill had been introduced, so nothing here is settled law. Treat the 2027 detail as the government's stated intention and check the Bill when it lands.
What each clause actually means
People lump these together and they are not the same thing. Read the whole restraint section of your contract, not just the part with "non-compete" in the heading.
A non-compete tries to stop you working for a competitor for a period after you leave. A client non-solicitation clause tries to stop you approaching former clients or accounts. A co-worker non-solicitation clause tries to stop you poaching former colleagues. A confidentiality or intellectual property obligation protects things like pricing, non-public customer data and product information, whether or not you compete. Notice is the time you must give to leave, and gardening leave is where you serve that notice away from the business. For a salesperson whose value is the relationships, a non-solicit can bite harder than a non-compete ever did. You can take the new job. Actively soliciting your old accounts is a separate question.
What counts towards the threshold, and why your title does not decide it
The proposed ban is defined by reference to the Fair Work high-income threshold, which rose to $190,100 for 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027. The old version of this page used the previous figure and said the test was base salary. Both were wrong, so here is the current position.
Under current Fair Work guidance, annual earnings include your wages and the agreed value of non-monetary benefits. They exclude compulsory superannuation and payments that cannot be worked out in advance, such as variable commissions and bonuses. So an agreed car value may count, while commission you have not yet earned may not, because it cannot be determined in advance. That is more nuanced than "base salary" and it matters most when your earnings sit near the line.
One important caveat: that inclusions-and-exclusions rule is the current Fair Work test. How the eventual ban defines earnings is one of the things the Bill will need to confirm, so read this as the current reading rather than a locked guarantee. And your role title does not decide coverage. Earnings and the enacted rules do.
Where building products roles tend to sit
This is illustration only, not a legal conclusion, and package levels move with state, portfolio and the market. As a rough guide, business development managers and account managers usually sit well below the threshold. Specification managers mostly sit below it, with the most senior spec leads edging closer. State sales managers are mixed, and national sales managers are the group most likely to sit above the line. If you want to sense-check where your own package sits, the building products sales salary guide has the benchmarks, and the state sales manager versus national sales manager breakdown covers the two roles nearest the threshold. Use the salary guide for package context, not as a test of legal coverage. If you are working out what a car allowance is really worth inside a package, the car allowance benchmarks piece breaks that down.
What to check before you sign or move
Read it, question it, get advice, in that order. People skim the schedule, sign the offer, and only read the restraint clause the day they want to leave. Your leverage is highest before you sign, not after, and most reasonable employers will explain or narrow a clause if you ask.
If you are considering a move, gather the signed contract and any variations, your incentive plan, your role description and the details of the proposed role. Work out which state's law applies. Then get advice before you accept, resign, contact former accounts or take any information with you. It is cheap insurance against an expensive mistake.
For employers
If you are on the hiring side, this is a good moment to review your contract templates with employment counsel. Identify the genuine interests you are actually protecting, keep confidentiality and non-solicitation protections distinct from a blanket non-compete, and do not present announced policy as though it is already law. A clause that overreaches is often the one that fails when it is tested.
What I am seeing
A couple of observations from my own conversations, offered as what I hear rather than as legal fact. The common misconception among candidates is that restraint clauses are enforceable exactly as written. In my experience some employers lean on that assumption as a scare tactic. And I have not seen building products businesses change their restraint wording much since the reform was announced, though some still lean heavily on restraints. Whether any particular clause is enforceable is a legal question for a lawyer, not something I can answer.
Where these facts come from
This is an editorial explainer, current as at July 2026, not legal advice. Primary sources, to be re-checked on the day of any update:
- Treasury: Non-compete clauses and other restraints for the announced reform and the distinction between restraint types.
- Fair Work Ombudsman: high-income threshold amounts for the $190,100 figure for 1 July 2026 to 30 June 2027.
- Fair Work Ombudsman: award and agreement-free wages and conditions for what annual earnings include and exclude.
- Treasury Ministers: address to the Recruitment and Staffing Industry Summit for the government's stated new-or-varied-contract approach. A speech is policy, not law, so recheck against the Bill.
- NSW legislation: Restraints of Trade Act 1976 for the NSW-specific statutory position.
- The introduced Bill, explanatory memorandum and enacted Act should replace the policy-speech wording as soon as they are available.
The observations attributed to me are from my own recruitment conversations and are not legal conclusions or market statistics. This page is general information, not legal advice, and every reader should get their own advice on their own contract.
If you are weighing a move, get legal advice on the restraint first. If the move itself is the question, I can give you a straight market read on the role and the package. That is what I do.
Cheers,
James