Victoria’s Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008

Guiding principles

Five principles that come first

Section 5 states Parliament’s intention that its principles be given effect by everyone administering the Act, carrying out functions under it, or carrying out the activities it regulates. The Patient Review Panel’s page sets them out. The guiding principles are that:

1. “the welfare and interests of persons born or to be born as a result of treatment procedures are paramount”
2. “at no time should the use of treatment procedures be for the purpose of exploiting, in trade or otherwise - the reproductive capabilities of individuals or children born as a result of treatment procedures”
3. “children born as the result of the use of donated gametes have a right to information about their donors”
4. “the health and wellbeing of persons undergoing treatment procedures must be protected at all times”
5. “persons seeking to undergo treatment procedures must not be discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation, marital or relationship status, gender identity, sex characteristics, race or religion.”

Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008, s 5, as set out on the Patient Review Panel’s page

The welfare and interests of the person who may be born come first in the list, and the Act calls them paramount.

Providers

Who may carry out treatment

Section 7 limits who may carry out assisted reproductive treatment. One of the people it allows, on the conditions the section sets, is a doctor carrying out the treatment on behalf of a registered ART provider; the section names others, which are in the Act.

A registered ART provider is a person registered under Part 8 of the Act. Under section 74(4), a provider stops being registered once it no longer holds RTAC accreditation, which the Act defines as accreditation granted by the Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand’s Reproductive Technology Accreditation Committee. The Secretary must make sure the register of registered ART providers is published on the department’s website.

The RTAC requirement is due to change. The 2026 amending Act, which is partly in force, will repeal the Act’s definition of RTAC accreditation and let the Secretary approve an accreditation scheme instead, as those provisions commence; clause 2 gives the dates.

Patients

Conditions for undergoing treatment

Section 10(1) sets the conditions on which a woman may undergo a treatment procedure. The first is consent: she, and her partner if she has one, must have consented in the prescribed form to a procedure of that kind. Section 13(1) adds that, before she consents to assisted reproductive treatment, she and any partner must have had counselling, covering the matters the Regulations prescribe, from a counsellor working on behalf of a registered ART provider; before artificial insemination, section 13(2) also allows that counselling from a person who meets the prescribed requirements. Clause 3 follows those steps in order.

Where a person does not meet the criteria for treatment, the Patient Review Panel’s page lists that among the applications it considers (s 10(2)(a) and s 15(1)(b)). The panel has its own clause: clause 4.

Donors

Donated eggs, sperm and embryos

A donor’s gametes may be used in a treatment procedure only if the donor has consented to their use in a procedure of that kind (s 16(1)). The donor’s consent must state how many women may be treated with them (s 17(1)(b)).

The Act’s third principle gives children born from donated gametes a right to information about their donors. The Central Register is kept by the Donor Conception Registrar (s 53), a person employed for the purposes of the Act under Part 3 of the Public Administration Act 2004 (s 99). The department’s donor conception register services page explains how they work.

Sex selection

Choosing a child’s sex

Section 28(2) gives two exceptions, and only two.

• The child needs to be of a particular sex to avoid the risk of passing on a genetic abnormality or genetic disease.
• The Patient Review Panel has otherwise approved using the gametes or embryo for that purpose.

Sections

The Act, section by section