Telemarketing Rules in Australia: Calling Hours, ID and Fax Rules

The Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017 sets the hours, identification and conduct rules every telemarketing and research call in Australia must follow, whether or not the number called is on the Do Not Call Register.

The Do Not Call Register stops certain calls from being made to a registered number at all. This Industry Standard is a separate, broader layer: it sets conduct rules, permitted hours, caller identification, ending the call, caller ID, that apply to every telemarketing and research call in Australia, regardless of registration status and regardless of whether the caller is otherwise exempt from the Register under Schedule 1. For what the Register itself does and who is exempt from it, see Australia's Do Not Call Register. For the separate rules covering email, SMS and other electronic messages, see the Spam Act in Australia.

Who This Standard Binds

The Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017 was made by the Australian Communications and Media Authority under section 125A of the Telecommunications Act 1997 and applies to "participants in each section of the telemarketing industry." That is a deliberately wide net: it covers a telemarketing call as defined under the Do Not Call Register Act 2006, and separately covers a voice call made for opinion polling or standard questionnaire-based research, folding research and polling calls into the same conduct rulebook as commercial telemarketing.

Because the Standard's authority comes from the Telecommunications Act rather than the Do Not Call Register Act, its rules apply on top of, not instead of, the Register. A call from an exempt caller, such as a registered charity, a political party fundraising call, or a government body, may lawfully reach a registered number under the Register's Schedule 1 exemptions, but that same call still has to comply with this Standard's hours, identification and termination rules. donotcall.gov.au confirms this directly: a consumer can lodge a complaint about a call made outside permitted hours or where the caller refused to identify itself "even if your number isn't on the Do Not Call Register."

Permitted Calling Hours

The Standard sets two different hours tables, one for ordinary telemarketing calls and a slightly wider one for research and opinion-polling calls.

"National public holidays" covers New Year's Day, Australia Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Anzac Day, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and any weekday substituted for one of those. Outside these windows, a call is not permitted at all, not merely discouraged.

Whose Time Zone Applies

Permitted hours are assessed against the usual residential address of the account holder being called, not the recipient's current physical location and not the caller's own location. That matters most for mobile numbers: a caller relying on the time where the phone is currently answered is not a defence. If a caller learns they have reached someone outside the account holder's local permitted hours, for example a mobile answered while the account holder is traveling in another time zone, the caller must end the call immediately, unless the recipient expressly asks to continue.

The only exception to the hours rule is prior express consent from the account holder, or a nominee, that specifically covers that day and time. A general consent to be called at some point does not override the hours rule; the consent has to cover the particular out-of-hours slot.

State and territory laws are allowed to add further restrictions on top of the Standard's hours; the federal rules are a floor, not a ceiling.

Caller Identification and What Must Be Disclosed

At the start of a telemarketing call, unless the call uses only a recorded or synthetic voice, the caller must state their own given name, the name of their employer if not self-employed (or their own business name if self-employed), the name of whoever caused the call to be made if different, and the purpose of the call. A caller is not required to identify itself if the recipient hangs up first, or if the caller itself ends the call within 5 seconds without speaking.

On request, the caller must immediately provide contact details for the caller's employer or the self-employed caller, for whoever caused the call, and for whoever handles complaints about any of the above. Those contact details must include a company or business name and an Australian number that can take voice calls during normal business hours at the recipient's location, plus at least a street address, postal address, email address or a website with a contact facility.

Research and polling calls follow the same core disclosure rules but may defer disclosing who commissioned the research until the recipient asks or the call ends, recognising that masked commissioning is a legitimate research method that commercial telemarketing does not get.

A call using a recorded or synthetic voice must give the recipient a way to trigger these on-request disclosures during the call, for example a prompt to press a key to speak with an operator.

Ending the Call and Caller ID

A caller must end the call immediately if the recipient asks to end it or otherwise indicates they do not want it to continue; no specific wording is required. The same immediate-termination duty applies if the caller learns it has reached someone outside permitted local hours, unless the recipient says they want to continue anyway.

Separately, a caller must not block transmission of its caller line identification. The number that displays, if called back, has to let the recipient reach the same identification and contact information within a reasonable time, and that number must remain capable of receiving a return call for at least 30 days from when the original call was made, so a caller cannot display a disconnected or burner number.

The Fax Marketing Industry Standard

A related instrument, the Telecommunications (Fax Marketing) Industry Standard 2021, made by the ACMA under section 125B of the Telecommunications Act 1997, sets the same kind of conduct floor for marketing faxes. Prohibited sending times mirror the ordinary telemarketing table above: no sending before 9am or after 8pm on weekdays, before 9am or after 5pm on Saturday, and no sending at all on Sunday or a national public holiday.

Every marketing fax must show, on its first page, in a minimum 10-point font, the advertiser's name, its ABN, contact details reachable during normal business hours, the destination number the fax was sent to, and an opt-out statement with a working opt-out address. A recipient is treated as opted out the moment they send an opt-out message, with no confirmation required from the sender, and the sender must remove that number from its list within 7 days. A sender must also make reasonable efforts not to send more than 10 faxes authorised by the same advertiser to the same number in any single 24-hour period, a volume cap that applies regardless of whether the number is on the Do Not Call Register.

Current Status and When These Rules Expire

Both Industry Standards discussed on this page are current as of this article's research date. Legislative instruments made under the Telecommunications Act carry a 10-year sunset date under the Legislation Act 2003, and the calls Standard's own version record on the Federal Register of Legislation shows it is due to sunset on 1 April 2027 unless the ACMA remakes or exempts it before then; the Fax Marketing Industry Standard's own sunset date was not checked for this article and should not be assumed to be the same. Readers should not treat these rules as permanently fixed; check the Federal Register of Legislation for the current version before relying on a specific detail close to that date.

Enforcement and How to Complain

Breach of the Register's own prohibition on calling a registered number carries civil penalties under the Do Not Call Register Act, which ACMA can pursue through court civil-penalty proceedings, infringement notices, court-enforceable undertakings or formal warnings. ACMA also enforces the Industry Standard's conduct rules directly, and its public outcomes bundle the two together: in the TAB action, 82 out-of-hours calls and nearly 4,000 identification failures under the Standard were resolved in the same settlement as TAB's 351 unlawful calls to registered numbers under the Register. In practice, ACMA's most detailed recent public enforcement outcome combined both layers: in July 2026, ACMA found that Tabcorp's TAB business had made 351 calls to Do Not Call Register numbers without consent, 82 calls outside the Standard's permitted hours, and nearly 4,000 calls without properly identifying the caller or the call's purpose, over a period from February 2024 to June 2025. TAB paid a $2.7 million-plus combined penalty and agreed to a court-enforceable undertaking requiring an independent review of its telemarketing systems.

To complain about a call, use the online form at donotcall.gov.au or call 1300 792 958. You can complain if you received an unsolicited telemarketing call or marketing fax more than 30 days after registering, if you received a telemarketing call outside permitted hours even on a number that is not registered, or if the caller refused to give the identification the Standard requires. ACMA states it generally does not investigate or resolve individual complaints, but uses them to inform its compliance and enforcement priorities. A call that is actually a scam, rather than a telemarketing call, should go to Scamwatch instead; ACMA's own guidance is that the Do Not Call Register is unlikely to stop scam calls.

Related Reading

For what the Do Not Call Register itself covers, who is eligible to register, and which callers are exempt from its prohibition, see Australia's Do Not Call Register. For the separate rules covering commercial email, SMS and other electronic messages, see the Spam Act in Australia. Debt collectors calling about a debt are also bound by these hours and identification rules; for the wider set of rules governing how a debt collector may contact you, see Debt Collection Laws in Australia. For the broader privacy framework these rules sit within, see the Australia data privacy laws hub.