Every few months someone asks us whether NSW is about to bring in an AED law like South Australia’s. It’s a fair question — there’s been a Bill, there’s been press, and the idea isn’t going away. So here’s a straight status update, current as of mid-2026, followed by the more useful question: what should a NSW property manager do about it right now?
The short version is that the legislative push has stalled, there’s no mandate today, and waiting for one is the wrong plan. Here’s the detail.
What was actually proposed
Between 2024 and 2025, a private member’s Bill called the Automated External Defibrillators (Public Access) Bill was introduced into the NSW Legislative Assembly three separate times by Gareth Ward, then the Member for Kiama. A private member’s Bill is one brought by an individual MP rather than the government — it’s how an idea gets onto the agenda, but it’s a much harder road to becoming law than a government Bill.
Had it passed, the Bill would have done roughly what SA’s Act does. It proposed to:
- mandate AEDs in large commercial buildings and a range of other facility types,
- require the responsible party to install and maintain the devices,
- require signage at the AED location,
- require registration with the Minister, and
- commence two years after the date of assent, giving organisations time to prepare.
That two-year lead time matters for the “is a deadline coming?” question: even if a Bill like this passed tomorrow, there’d be no compliance obligation until two years later. There was never a 2026 deadline in NSW.
Where it stands now: lapsed, three times over
None of the three Bills became law. Each lapsed:
| Bill | Introduced | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Bill 2024 (No 1) | 21 March 2024 | Lapsed 20 April 2024 |
| Bill 2024 (No 2) | 6 June 2024 | Lapsed 8 November 2024 |
| Bill 2024 (No 3) | 21 November 2024 | Lapsed 13 May 2025 |
The most recent attempt, Bill No 3, never progressed beyond the second reading speech in the Assembly and never reached the Legislative Council. The NSW Parliament record lists its status plainly: “Lapsed in Accordance with Standing Orders, Tue 13 May 2025.”
There’s a second reason the push has gone quiet. The member who introduced all three Bills resigned from NSW Parliament in August 2025, which means there’s currently no MP carrying the proposal forward. As of mid-2026, no AED-specific Bill is before the NSW Parliament, and none has a clear champion lined up to reintroduce it.
The government’s position is part of the picture
It’s not only a matter of who’s sponsoring the Bill. The NSW Government opposed it on the merits. A spokesperson for the Health Minister argued there was limited evidence that spreading AEDs more widely outside key public areas improves survival rates, noting that most cardiac arrests happen in the home rather than in workplaces or commercial buildings.
You can agree or disagree with that reasoning — there’s a strong public-health case on the other side — but for a property manager trying to read the tea leaves, it tells you something useful. A mandate of this kind would need either a change in the government’s stance or a change of government to get up. Neither is on the table right now. This isn’t a law that’s “about to happen” and got delayed. It’s a proposal that’s been rejected three times and currently has no sponsor.
So what does NSW actually require today?
Nothing AED-specific. There is no law in NSW requiring commercial buildings to have a defibrillator, no compliance deadline, and no penalty for not having one.
What you do have is a general first-aid duty under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW). As a person conducting a business or undertaking, you have to provide first-aid equipment and ensure it’s accessible. SafeWork NSW’s First Aid in the Workplace Code of Practice frames the AED decision as a risk-assessed one — it says an AED may be provided where there’s a risk of electrocution to workers, a likely delay in ambulance arrival, or large numbers of members of the public at your workplace.
That’s discretionary, not mandatory. But “discretionary” doesn’t mean “ignore it”. It means the decision sits with you and your risk assessment — and for a lot of NSW commercial settings, a fair risk assessment lands on yes.
What property managers should actually track — and do
Here’s the practical part. Treating the Bill as a reason to wait gets the logic backwards. Two things are worth tracking, and one thing is worth doing now.
Track, lightly:
- Any new Bill or government position. If a member reintroduces an AED Bill, or the government signals a change of heart, that’s the signal to watch — not the old lapsed Bills. We keep an eye on the NSW Parliament bills register and will update our NSW guidance when something real moves.
- The two-year clause. If a mandate ever does pass, the likely two-year lead time means you’d have ample warning. There’s no scenario where a NSW law lands on you overnight.
Do now, regardless:
Act on the duty-of-care case rather than the legislative one. If your building has high public footfall, an ageing workforce, electrical risk, or sits where ambulance response is slower, the WHS Code already points toward an AED — and the survival maths makes it worth it on its own terms. Cardiac arrest survival drops by around ten percent for every minute without defibrillation; an on-site device is often the only thing that bridges the gap before the ambulance arrives.
If you install one, do the two things the lapsed Bill would have required anyway, because they’re simply good practice:
- Register it with NSW Ambulance via the GoodSAM app. It’s free and voluntary, and it puts your device in front of Triple Zero call-takers and nearby responders.
- Keep it maintained — pads and battery in date, device checked — so it works the day it’s needed.
In other words, you can do the sensible version of the Bill voluntarily, today, without waiting for a law that isn’t coming any time soon. The forward-thinking NSW property managers we work with aren’t waiting to be told. They’ve worked out that the duty-of-care case and the survival case both already point the same way.
Where SafePulse fits
We supply, install and maintain AEDs for NSW commercial buildings, and we’ll give you the honest version of where the law sits — no invented deadlines, no scare tactics about a mandate that doesn’t exist. If a risk assessment supports a device, we’ll help you choose it, place it where it’s accessible, register it with NSW Ambulance through GoodSAM, and keep it rescue-ready.
While there’s no Bill to track, the obligation that applies today is the WHS duty in NSW WHS duty of care: first aid and AED obligations. If you already have devices on site, registering them with NSW Ambulance via GoodSAM is free. Our New South Wales AED page sets out the state position.
If you manage a NSW building and want to get ahead of the curve on your own terms, start with our New South Wales AED page. For the legal baseline, NSW WHS duty of care and your first-aid obligations is the piece to read, and registering your AED with NSW Ambulance through GoodSAM walks through the voluntary registration step.
