It's important to distinguish between a licence to do a particular job and a Statement of Attainment that comes from being assessed as competent to do a job.
Licences
Licences are issued by regulatory authorities - such as a WorkCover authority or a forestry agency. This may be for safety or environmental reasons.
For some jobs, if you don't have the licence you can't do the job; this is a legal requirement. Licences are often required for jobs such as forest operations, forklift driving and operating heavy equipment.
Statements of Attainment
A Statement of Attainment (or qualification) is not a licence. Rather, it is formal evidence that you have the skills to do a particular task, often assessed against national units of competency.
What is needed to demonstrate these skills may be different to what is needed to obtain a licence. It is not uncommon for units of competency, for example, to require more than licensing authorities do in their tests.
Areas of overlap
While licences and Statements of Attainment are different, there are ways in which they ‘overlap'.
In certain circumstances, most notably for a forest operator's licence, the licence may require a person to be assessed against national units of competency. Also, sometimes a licence (e.g. for a forklift) may be used as extra evidence to show that you have competence in a particular job.
