Is It Legal to Record a Conversation in Australia?

Whether recording a conversation is legal in Australia depends on the state or territory, not one national rule. Victoria, Queensland and the NT let a participant record their own conversation; NSW, Tasmania and the ACT restrict it but excuse most personal recording; WA and SA restrict it with no personal-use excuse at all.

This article covers each state and territory's recording and surveillance-device Act, the Commonwealth statutory privacy tort, and the interception Act as it applies to recording your own phone call. It does not cover journalism defences, courtroom recording rules or law enforcement warrant powers.

The Three Groups: How States Treat Recording Your Own Conversation

Most commentary on Australian recording law borrows the US "one-party consent" and "all-party consent" labels. Those labels do not describe any Australian statute. Every Act asks two questions instead: does the offence apply to a participant, and if so, what excuses the recording. Answering those correctly produces three genuinely different groups.

Group 1, outside the offence entirely: Victoria, Queensland and the Northern Territory. The Surveillance Devices Act 1999 (Vic) s 6(1) only prohibits a listening device on a private conversation "to which the person is not a party". The Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 (Qld) s 43(1) creates the offence, and s 43(2) exempts a party outright. The Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NT) s 11(1) is drafted the same way. A participant never needs an exception, because the prohibition was never written to reach them.

Group 2, prohibited by default with a broad personal-use exception: New South Wales, Tasmania and the ACT. The Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW) s 7(1)(b) prohibits recording a conversation you are a party to. Section 7(3)(b)(ii) excuses it where the recording "is not made for the purpose of communicating or publishing the conversation... to persons who are not parties". Tasmania's s 5(3) and the ACT's s 4(3) share this structure, covering most private recording a person never intends to share.

Group 3, prohibited with only a narrow lawful-interests exception: Western Australia and South Australia. The Surveillance Devices Act 1998 (WA) s 5(1)(b) and the Surveillance Devices Act 2016 (SA) s 4(1)(b) prohibit recording your own conversation, with no personal-use limb in either Act's exceptions. WA's s 5(3) and SA's s 4(2)(a) excuse it only with all-party consent, or a principal party's consent plus a reasonable need to protect that party's lawful interests. Recording purely for your own reference, with neither, is not excused. South Australia adds one escape hatch WA lacks: s 6 excuses a listening device used in the public interest.

Comparison Table: Recording Your Own Conversation, State by State

This table answers one question only: whether a participant may record their own conversation. It says nothing about video, workplace monitoring or publication, each covered below.

What Counts as a "Private Conversation"

Every Act in this cluster turns on the statutory meaning of "private conversation", and that meaning is not identical everywhere. Queensland's Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 defines it to exclude circumstances where either party "ought reasonably to expect the words may be overheard, recorded, monitored or listened to by some other person". NSW and Victoria carry an equivalent exclusion. That is why a loud argument on a train platform is generally not treated as a "private conversation" at all, regardless of which group the state falls into.

Tasmania is the exception. The Listening Devices Act 1991 (Tas) defines "private conversation" without that "ought reasonably expect to be overheard" carve-out. The common assumption that a public conversation is automatically outside the Act's protection cannot be transferred to Tasmania without checking the definition first, which matters most for recording bystanders, or the police, on a Tasmanian street.

Recording Is Not the Same as Publishing

Every jurisdiction treats recording a conversation, and publishing what was recorded, as two separate offences judged by different tests. A recording lawful to make can still be unlawful to share, which is the single most misunderstood point in this area.

The Surveillance Devices Act 1999 (Vic) s 11 prohibits knowingly publishing a record of a private conversation or activity, subject to exceptions for consent of each party, material reasonably necessary in the public interest or to protect the recorder's lawful interests, and legal or disciplinary proceedings. The Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW) s 11 prohibits publishing a conversation obtained in contravention of Part 2. Queensland splits the offence in two: the Invasion of Privacy Act 1971 s 44 covers a third party publishing an unlawfully recorded conversation, and s 45 covers a party who recorded lawfully but then publishes it, subject to exceptions including consent and legal proceedings.

South Australia separates publication by purpose: s 9 governs material published to protect a lawful interest, and s 10 governs public-interest material, generally requiring a Supreme Court order, with media organisations exempted. WA, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT each carry an equivalent publication offence in their own Acts. The point is the same everywhere: a lawful recording carries no automatic right to show, post or send it to anyone outside the conversation.

Phone Calls: Why State Law Governs, Not the Federal Interception Act

A common assumption is that recording your own phone call is a Commonwealth question under federal wiretap law. It is not. The Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act 1979 (Cth) s 6(1) defines interception as "listening to or recording, by any means, such a communication in its passage over that telecommunications system without the knowledge of the person making the communication."

A party to their own call has knowledge of their own communication, and recording it happens at the point of receipt, not in the network's passage. That takes a caller recording their own conversation outside the Commonwealth interception prohibition. Whether you can record your own phone call is instead answered by the state or territory listening-device Act that applies where you are, using the same three-group framework above, applied to a phone call rather than an in-person conversation.

The New Federal Privacy Tort Overlaying State Law

Since 10 June 2025, a Commonwealth statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy has sat on top of every state's recording law, under Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) Schedule 2. It does not replace the state Acts, and can apply even where a recording was lawfully made, because it targets the invasion of privacy rather than the recording method.

Clause 7(1) requires a plaintiff to establish all of: an invasion of privacy by intruding on seclusion or misusing information; that a person in the plaintiff's position would have had a reasonable expectation of privacy; that the invasion was intentional or reckless, since negligence is not enough; that it was serious; and that the public interest in privacy outweighed a countervailing interest such as freedom of expression, open justice or proper administration of government (cl 7(3)). Under cl 7(2), the tort is actionable without proof of damage. Clause 11 bars aggravated damages, allows damages for emotional distress, allows exemplary damages only exceptionally, and caps combined non-economic-loss and exemplary damages at the greater of $478,550 or the defamation-law maximum. Clause 14 sets the limitation period at three years from the invasion or one year from awareness, whichever is earlier, extendable to six years, or before the plaintiff's 21st birthday if under 18 when it occurred.

The tort's first published application was interlocutory only. In Kurraba Group Pty Ltd & Anor v Williams [2025] NSWDC 396, the District Court of New South Wales found serious questions to be tried on intimidation, defamation and the statutory tort, after private wedding photographs were published online during a dispute, and granted urgent interlocutory injunctions. That decision confirms courts will engage with the tort at an early stage; it is not a final ruling on the merits or on quantum.

Video Is Regulated Differently From Audio, and Not Everywhere

Australian surveillance law treats a listening device and an optical, or video, device as separate provisions judged by separate definitions, in the states that regulate video at all. Queensland, Tasmania and the ACT have no general optical surveillance provision, so covert video of a private activity there falls to narrower, separate laws. New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territory all regulate optical devices.

NSW is structurally different. The Surveillance Devices Act 2007 (NSW) s 8 is a trespass test: it only catches an optical device installed through trespass on, or interference with, premises or a vehicle. A camera on your own property, pointed outward, that never requires entering a neighbour's land generally sits outside s 8 altogether. Victoria, WA, SA and the NT instead ask whether the device recorded a "private activity", a test not tied to trespass. A further trap applies to a device recording both video and audio, such as a video doorbell: the two components are judged under different tests, so a microphone that picks up a private conversation is not protected just because the footage is unremarkable.

Using a Secret Recording as Evidence in Court

Whether a court admits a recording is separate from whether making it broke the law; Australian courts do not treat an unlawfully obtained recording as automatically excluded. The Evidence Act 1995 (Cth) s 138(1) provides that improperly or illegally obtained evidence "is not to be admitted unless the desirability of admitting the evidence outweighs the undesirability of admitting evidence that has been obtained in the way in which the evidence was obtained." Section 138(3) lists factors a court weighs, including probative value, the gravity and deliberateness of the impropriety, the evidence's importance, and the difficulty of obtaining it lawfully.

This uniform evidence law applies in the Commonwealth, NSW, Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT and the NT. Queensland and South Australia apply the common-law Bunning v Cross discretion instead, weighing similar factors without the statutory checklist. Western Australia is mid-transition: the Evidence Act 2025 (WA), assented 25 September 2025, adopts the uniform approach but had not commenced as of this article's verification date, so WA remains governed by the Evidence Act 1906 (WA) and the common law. No court guarantees in advance that a recording will be admitted; its lawfulness under the relevant state Act is simply the first factor weighed.

This article provides general legal information about recording and surveillance law in Australia. It does not constitute legal advice and does not account for your individual circumstances. Statutes and cases referenced were verified against primary sources as at 19 July 2026 and are subject to amendment. Consult a legal practitioner admitted in the relevant Australian state or territory for advice on a specific recording.

Related reading: the Australia recording laws hub links to a dedicated page for each state and territory, and the Australia data privacy laws overview covers the Australian Privacy Principles that apply to organisations rather than individuals acting privately.