Australia's Do Not Call Register: Eligibility, Duration and Penalties

Australia's Do Not Call Register lets you register a private phone number or a dedicated fax number for free so telemarketers and fax marketers must stop contacting it, registration now lasts indefinitely rather than the eight years sometimes claimed, and the Register itself never blocks a single call.

The Do Not Call Register is created by the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 (Cth) and run by the Australian Communications and Media Authority. Under the Act, its only legal purpose is to support two prohibitions: businesses must not make an unsolicited telemarketing call, or send an unsolicited marketing fax, to a number on the Register. This page covers who can register, how long registration lasts, who is bound and who is exempt, and what happens when a business breaks the rules. The separate conduct rules that apply to every telemarketing call, registered number or not, including calling hours and caller identification, are covered on Telemarketing Rules in Australia. The rules for commercial email and text messages are a different Act entirely, covered on the Spam Act in Australia.

What the Register Does and Does Not Do

Registering a number does not, by itself, stop anything from reaching you. ACMA's own consumer guidance is direct on this point: the Register "does not have any technological impact on your telephone or fax line and it does not block or physically stop other parties from contacting you." It works only because the Do Not Call Register Act separately makes it unlawful for a business to call or fax a registered number without an exemption or your consent, and because telemarketers are expected to check their calling lists against the Register before dialing.

That also means registration is narrow in scope. It stops telemarketing calls and marketing faxes under the Do Not Call Register Act. It does nothing about commercial email or text messages, which sit under the separate Spam Act 2003, covered on the Spam Act in Australia. And ACMA's own guidance is blunt that the Register "is unlikely to stop scam calls," since scammers do not check the Register before dialing; a scam call should go to Scamwatch instead, not the Register's complaint form.

Who Can Register a Number: Eligibility Under Section 14

Section 14 of the Act limits eligibility to four categories, and a number must fall into at least one of them:

• Used or maintained primarily for private or domestic purposes.
• Used or maintained exclusively for sending or receiving faxes.
• Used or maintained exclusively by a government body.
• An emergency service number.

A general-purpose business voice line does not qualify. The Act defines a "business number" as any Australian number other than one used primarily for private or domestic purposes, and section 14(a) requires exactly that private-or-domestic-primary use. ACMA's own guidance restates this practically for a phone used for both business and personal calls: "you can register the number as long as your personal use is more than 50% of total use."

Fax numbers work differently. The fax category in section 14(b) has no private-use test at all; it turns only on whether the number is used exclusively for fax, which on its face covers a business's dedicated fax line just as much as a household one. A business cannot register its main phone number, but it can register a fax-only line.

How to Register

Registration is free, whether done online at donotcall.gov.au or by phone on 1300 792 958. You must generally be the account holder for the number, or a nominee the account holder has authorised; simply having given the number to a business as a contact detail, for example on a loan application, does not by itself let you register or remove that number yourself.

Registering does not take effect the moment you submit it. ACMA's own consumer guidance states that "telemarketers and fax marketers have 30 days to recognise the registration of a number and to stop contacting that number." Mechanically, section 11(3) achieves this through a defence for a caller who checked the Register within the 30 days before calling and was told the number was not registered (see the mechanics below), so a call placed to a freshly registered number inside that window is not automatically a breach.

How Long Registration Lasts: The Eight-Year Claim Does Not Hold Up

A figure of eight years circulates as the length of a Do Not Call Register registration. It is not correct at any point in the Act's history. The current law, section 17, states registration "remains in force indefinitely" once it takes effect, unless it is removed. There is no renewal step and no expiry date to track.

That was not always the position. The Act as originally made in 2006 set registration at a 3-year term, renewable on application. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Deregulation) Act 2015 changed that, and the current indefinite-registration text took effect from 27 April 2015. Comparing the compiled text immediately before and after that date confirms the change directly: the version in force to 27 April 2015 still read "3 years," and the version taking effect that day reads "indefinitely." No compilation of the Act at any point between 2006 and today used an eight-year term. Once registered, a number stays on the Register until it is removed, whether by the account holder's request or under a determination made by the ACMA.

The Rules Callers Must Follow Once You Are Registered

Section 11 makes it unlawful for a person to make, or cause to be made, a telemarketing call to a registered Australian number, unless the call fits a Schedule 1 exemption or the account holder consented. Section 12B is the equivalent prohibition for marketing faxes sent to a registered fax number under Schedule 1A. Both provisions include a defence for a caller who checked the number against the Register within the 30 days before calling and was told, in good faith, that it was not registered.

Liability is not limited to whoever physically dials the number. The Act treats a business as having caused a call to be made if it contracts, arranges or otherwise understands with another party, such as an outsourced call centre, that the other party will make calls to give effect to that arrangement. A company that outsources its telemarketing is liable if the call centre it hired calls a registered number to fulfil that arrangement, and separately, a business is not allowed to enter into a telemarketing contract at all unless it requires the telemarketer to comply with the Do Not Call Register Act. Aiding, procuring, inducing or conspiring in a breach is also its own contravention.

When Consent Lets a Business Call or Fax You Anyway

The prohibition in section 11 does not apply if the account holder, or their nominee, consented. Consent under Schedule 2 can be express, or reasonably inferred from the person's conduct and their business or other relationships with the caller. Two limits matter for readers assessing whether a call was lawful:

• If express consent is given without stating how long it lasts, it is treated as withdrawn after 3 months. A business relying on an open-ended "yes" needs either a longer term stated up front or fresh consent every 3 months.
• Consent can never be inferred merely from a phone or fax number being published, for example on a website or in a directory. Publishing a number is not an invitation to be called.

Consent can also be withdrawn at any time, and once withdrawn, further calls or faxes relying on it become unlawful.

Who Is Exempt From the Register

Schedule 1 lists categories of caller whose calls to a registered number are not treated as prohibited "telemarketing calls" at all, and Schedule 1A mirrors the same categories for marketing faxes:

• Government bodies and registered charities.
• Political parties, independent parliamentarians and local councillors, and candidates for office, but only where the call or fax is for the purpose of fund-raising for electoral or political purposes.
• Educational institutions calling a household connected to a current or former student, or an employee of an organisation that engaged the institution.

The political exemption is narrower than it sounds. donotcall.gov.au states plainly that "most political calls are not telemarketing calls" in the first place, since a call that is not commercial, including general campaign persuasion or a recorded message with no fund-raising ask, falls outside the Act's definition of a telemarketing call entirely and never needed a Schedule 1 exemption. The Schedule 1 political carve-out exists specifically for calls whose purpose is soliciting donations.

Being exempt from section 11 does not free a caller from every other rule. Nothing in the Do Not Call Register Act or ACMA's own guidance creates a standing right for a consumer to tell an exempt caller, such as a charity or a political party, to stop contacting them altogether; the caller only has to follow the separate calling-conduct rules, such as ending an individual call on request, covered on Telemarketing Rules in Australia. Exempt status affects whether the Register's prohibition applies at all, not whether the caller has to behave once connected.

Penalties for Calling or Faxing a Registered Number

Contravening section 11 or 12B is a civil penalty provision, not a criminal offence; ACMA takes the matter to the Federal Court or the Federal Circuit and Family Court, and the maximum depends on whether the party is a corporation or an individual and whether it has a prior finding against it for the same kind of contravention. At the current penalty unit value of $364, a first-time corporate contravention of the core calling or faxing prohibition tops out at $36,400, rising to up to $182,000 per contravention, with a $3,640,000 same-day cap, for a body corporate with a prior finding against it.

In practice, ACMA more often uses its faster infringement-notice power under Schedule 3, or seeks a court-enforceable undertaking, rather than pursuing the court maximum. ACMA's most recent public telemarketing enforcement outcome, announced 22 July 2026, found that Tabcorp's TAB business made 351 calls to Do Not Call Register numbers without consent, 82 calls outside permitted hours, and nearly 4,000 calls without properly identifying the caller, between February 2024 and June 2025. TAB paid a $2.7 million-plus combined penalty and agreed to a court-enforceable undertaking to commission an independent review of its telemarketing systems, rather than being taken to the statutory ceiling in court. A court can separately order compensation for a person who suffered loss because of a contravention, on application by ACMA or the affected person, in addition to any penalty.

How to Complain

Complaints go through the online form at donotcall.gov.au or by phone on 1300 792 958. ACMA's own complaint criteria cover a call or fax to a number that has been registered for more than 30 days, a telemarketing call outside the permitted hours even to a number that is not registered, and a caller who refused to give the identification information the rules require. A complaint about a business phone number is generally not accepted unless the calling-hours or identification rules were broken. ACMA states it generally does not resolve individual complaints, but uses the roughly 3,400 it receives each month to set compliance and enforcement priorities. Complaints about unwanted email or SMS marketing go through ACMA's separate spam-reporting channel instead, covered on the Spam Act in Australia.

Scam Calls Need a Different Response

The Do Not Call Register is a marketing-suppression tool, not a fraud-prevention one. ACMA's own guidance is explicit that registering "will not prevent you from receiving phone calls or faxes related to scams," and that the Register is unlikely to stop them at all. A suspected scam call should be reported to Scamwatch rather than through the Register's complaint form, and anyone who has already engaged with a scam call should also contact their bank, their phone or internet provider, and consider a police report. For the broader steps to take if your personal information has actually been exposed, see What to Do If Your Information Is Affected by a Data Breach in Australia and Identity Theft Laws in Australia.

Related Reading

For the calling-hours, caller identification and fax-content rules every telemarketing call and marketing fax must follow, registered number or not, see Telemarketing Rules in Australia. For the separate rules covering commercial email and text messages, see the Spam Act in Australia. Debt collectors are also bound by the calling-conduct rules when they phone about a debt; see Debt Collection Laws in Australia. For how Australia's broader privacy rules work, see the Australian Privacy Principles and how to make a privacy complaint in Australia, or return to the Australia data privacy laws hub.