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Fertility treatment in Melbourne and the Victorian law that governs it

In Melbourne, as everywhere in Victoria, assisted reproductive treatment is governed by the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008, which says who may carry it out and on what conditions a woman may undergo it. Since 1 January 2025 the Secretary of the Department of Health has been its regulator. This guide, published by Dotto, reads that law in five clauses.

This site is not a clinic and offers no treatment. It names no clinic, hospital or doctor, and it does not say what treatment anyone should have.

General information, not medical or legal advice. The law itself is the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 on Victoria’s legislation site, and the Department of Health explains how it is applied on its page on assisted reproductive treatment regulation.

Drawn as a consent document: one numbered clause for each guide, a red seal on the clause that sets out the Act’s offences, and the signature line left blank. Red marks the law’s prohibitions throughout this site, and nothing else.

Key facts

The law at a glance

Act: Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 (Vic)
Regulations: Assisted Reproductive Treatment Regulations 2019, in operation since 13 December 2019
Regulator: The Secretary of the Department of Health, from 1 January 2025
Regulatory branch: The Health Regulator, the department’s main regulatory oversight branch, which lists assisted reproductive treatment among the areas it regulates
Former regulator: The Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA), whose functions passed to the department from 1 January 2025 and which the Act records as abolished
Review body: The Patient Review Panel, established under section 82 of the Act
Public service: Public Fertility Care, for eligible Victorians
Change in progress: The Health Legislation Amendment (Regulatory Reform) Act 2026, assented to on 4 August 2026 and partly in force

Contents

Five clauses, one for each part of the law

1
The Act
What the Act covers, section by section: its guiding principles, who may carry out treatment, the conditions for undergoing it, donated gametes, and its offences.
2
The regulator
The Secretary and the Health Regulator, what changed when VARTA’s functions moved on 1 January 2025, and the dates of the 2026 amending Act.
3
Consent and counselling
The counselling and written consent the Act requires before treatment, and the right to withdraw consent.
4
The Patient Review Panel
The body that hears applications on matters the Act sends to it, among them refused treatment, posthumous use, storage and sex selection, and who sits on it.
5
Public Fertility Care
Victoria’s public fertility service: who is eligible, the referral it needs, what it costs, and the public egg and sperm bank.

Offences

Two lines the Act draws in red

Most of the Act sets conditions. Several sections make conduct an offence; two of them bind anyone who carries out treatment.

Section 7

Only the people section 7 allows, on the conditions it sets, may carry out assisted reproductive treatment; one of them is a doctor acting on behalf of a registered ART provider. The maximum penalty is 480 penalty units or 4 years’ imprisonment, or both.

Section 28

Anyone carrying out a treatment procedure is forbidden to use gametes or an embryo, or to carry out the procedure in a particular way, with the purpose, or one of the purposes, of producing or trying to produce a child of a particular sex. The maximum penalty is 240 penalty units or 2 years’ imprisonment, or both. The two exceptions, avoiding a genetic risk and approval by the Patient Review Panel, are set out in clause 1.

Principles

What the Act puts first

Section 5 sets out principles Parliament intends to guide everyone who administers the Act or carries out the activities it regulates. The first, as the Patient Review Panel’s page gives it, is that:

“the welfare and interests of persons born or to be born as a result of treatment procedures are paramount”
Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008, s 5, as quoted on the Patient Review Panel’s page

All five principles are quoted in clause 1.

About

How this guide is made

Every line here is read from the Act, its Regulations, the 2026 amending Act, the Department of Health’s pages and the Patient Review Panel’s page. Those sources are listed at the foot of each page. Where they leave a question open, this guide leaves it open too, and says where the official answer is kept.