Aged Care Marketing Compliance: Three Regulators the New Act Never Names

No, the new Aged Care Act 2024 does not cover your advertising. It started on 1 November 2025, and its full text never uses the word "advertising". It never uses "marketing" either. But that silence does not give you a free pass. Three other sets of rules already cover your marketing, and the Act names none of them. The Australian Consumer Law cost Bupa $6 million in 2020, over services it charged for and did not fully deliver. Section 133 of the National Law (the AHPRA ad rule) applies once you promote a registered nurse or a physiotherapist. And Section 144(1) ties the Statement of Rights to your registration. Here is which rule covers each sentence on your site.

Does the new Aged Care Act regulate aged care advertising?

No, it does not say a single word about it.

The Aged Care Act 2024 got assent on 2 December 2024. It started on 1 November 2025. The first start date was 1 July 2025, but it was pushed back. It replaced three older laws at once. Those were the Aged Care Act 1997, the Aged Care (Transitional Provisions) Act 1997 and the Aged Care Quality and Safety Commission Act 2018.

So it is now the whole rulebook for your sector. I counted key words across the full text as it started. That is Compilation No. 1, dated 1 November 2025. Here is what I found.

The count for both words is zero. This law is long enough to replace three others. Yet the words you would look for as a marketer are simply not there.

This is what catches providers out. Your compliance team reads the Act. They find nothing about advertising. So they decide, fairly enough, that marketing sits outside the new rules. The first part is right. The second part can cost you a lot.

What the Act says about "misleading" instead

The word does appear, though. "Misleading" shows up 26 times. You should know what it points at, because it does not point at your website.

Every one of them is about what you tell the regulator. None of them is about what you tell a family.

Part 15, Division 1 of the Act has the heading "Civil penalty provisions for false or misleading information or documents". Section 529 covers false or misleading information. Section 530 covers false or misleading documents. Section 591 covers the same thing in your applications, claims and requests.

One of these rules is sharper than the rest. Section 129(1)(b) lets the Commissioner suspend your registration if your application "contained information that was false or misleading in a material particular". In plain words, a false detail that matters. Section 131(1)(b) lets the Commissioner cancel your registration on the same ground.

So the Act checks what you tell the government. What you tell a family is left to other rules. That handover is the whole story here.

What does the Statement of Rights actually require?

Section 23 sets out a Statement of Rights in 13 parts. It gives the people in your care a right to choice and independence. They have a right to fair access and to safe, quality services. They have a right to be free from violence and neglect, and a right to privacy. They must be told things in a way they understand. They can complain without payback, and they can have an advocate. They can also stay in touch with the people, and the pets, that matter to them.

If you write your own copy, one part matters more than the rest.

Section 23(6) gives a person the right "to seek, and be provided with, records and information about the individual's rights under this section and the funded aged care services the individual accesses, including the costs of those services".

That means people have a right to clear facts about your services and what they cost. Your fees page is where this gets tested.

Now for the part that almost every marketing article about the new Act gets wrong.

Here is what Section 24 does say. Providers "must take all reasonable and proportionate steps to act compatibly with the rights specified in section 23". That means you must do what is sensible and fair to respect those rights. The law also allows for limits. Rights can clash with each other. Other people have rights too. Other laws still apply, and the Act names the Work Health and Safety Act 2011.

The real teeth sit one step away. The Act's own note to Section 24 points straight at them.

Under Section 144(1), a condition of your registration is that you "must demonstrate understanding of the Statement of Rights and have in place practices to ensure that the provider acts compatibly with the Statement of Rights". And under Section 358, a person can complain to the Complaints Commissioner if you do not.

Read that as a marketer and the risk is clear. Nobody sues you. Instead, somebody complains, and the complaint lands on your registration.

How does marketing copy become a compliance document?

A promise in your brochure is a service you have agreed to supply. This has already led to the largest aged care marketing fine in Australia.

On 12 May 2020 the ACCC announced the result of a Federal Court case. The court ordered $6 million in penalties against Bupa Aged Care Australia Pty Ltd, for making misleading claims. Bupa had taken payment for extra services it did not supply, or only partly supplied. This hit residents at 20 aged care homes in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania. Bupa said it would pay back around $18.3 million.

The list of services is the telling part. It reads like the features section of a website. It included dementia-designed gardens, physiotherapy rooms and talking book libraries. It also included leisure facilities, hot breakfasts, travel escorts and climate control.

Rod Sims, then ACCC Chair, put it this way. "Bupa's failure to provide services for which it accepted payment is extremely disappointing and likely lessened the quality of life of the aged care residents in Bupa's care."

None of those were wild claims. Your own marketing team could write any of those lines without a second thought. The breach was the gap between the sentence and the real service.

Regulators are still looking at this. In December 2024 the ACCC took Ausnew Home Care Service Pty Ltd to court. It alleged the company made misleading claims when it sold aged care and disability products online. Some claims said products were "NDIS Approved". Others were about what buyers could expect under the consumer guarantees. These are only allegations, and the court has not ruled. The point is that the regulator is still watching your sector.

Does AHPRA apply to an aged care provider?

Very often, yes. And it is the set of rules your sector talks about least.

Section 133 of the National Law is the AHPRA rule on health advertising. It covers ads for health services given by registered practitioners. It reaches those practitioners and the businesses that employ them. So it applies well beyond clinics.

Now look at what your home actually promotes. You might list registered nurses on site, physiotherapy, occupational therapy or podiatry.

All four are registered professions under AHPRA's National Boards. So once your home page promotes them, that page is a health service ad. Section 133 now applies to you.

That brings the familiar bans with it. You cannot use testimonials about the clinical side of care. You cannot make claims that promise a result. You cannot say anything misleading or make a comparison you cannot prove. We set out the whole set of rules in the AHPRA advertising guidelines guide. The testimonial rule is in what counts as a testimonial under AHPRA.

So one page of yours often answers to two sets of rules. A sentence about the garden answers to the Australian Consumer Law. A sentence about the physiotherapist answers to Section 133 as well.

Which sentences on a typical aged care website are risky?

Here is the map, claim by claim. The right-hand column gives you a fix you can still use.

People often miss the last row. Saying you are compliant is itself a claim. If your site says you uphold the Statement of Rights, you have given a complaints officer a test written in your own words.

Can you still use resident and family stories?

Sometimes you can. The test is what the story is about, and who said it does not matter.

A quote about the clinical side of care is a testimonial about a health service. Take this one. "The nurses got my mother's pain under control." You cannot use it. You cannot use a reworded version either. And you cannot copy a Google review like it onto your own page.

A quote about the non-clinical side is different. It might be about the meals, the garden or the room. It might be about how admissions felt, or whether staff rang back. That is about service, and it is not clinical care. Still get a second opinion on each quote. A sentence often drifts into clinical ground halfway through.

The safest fix is the one clinics found years ago. Take the stories off your own site and let them live where you did not publish them. We covered the same problem for practices in allied health marketing, and the NDIS version in the NDIS marketing guide.

One paragraph, three regulators: a worked example

Take an ordinary sentence from an aged care landing page.

Now count the problems with it.

• "Families choose us because" is a testimonial, told second hand. It points at nursing, so Section 133 applies.
• "gets the best outcomes" promises a result. It also compares you to others in a way you cannot prove. That falls under Section 133 and the Australian Consumer Law.
• "award-winning" is fine only if you name the award and the year.
• "all-inclusive care and no hidden costs" is a consumer law claim. It also sits against the Section 23(6) right to know what services cost.

Here it is again, written so it still sells and still stands up.

It is more specific, and you can check every part of it. That is the trade compliance asks you to make. In my experience it is also the version that brings in families. A family comparing 3 homes wants facts they can put in a spreadsheet.

What should a provider fix this quarter?

Work through these in order.

1. List every clinical claim. Search your site for nurse, nursing, physiotherapy, allied health, therapy, clinical and outcome. Each hit is a Section 133 question.
2. Match every feature claim to a real service at each home. In the Bupa case, a group brochure listed things only some homes had. Each home's page must be true for that home.
3. Publish your fee schedule and what it leaves out. Section 23(6) makes cost information a right. A page that says "contact us for pricing" works against you.
4. Remove or move clinical testimonials. That includes reviews you copied onto your site.
5. Make your complaints process easy to find. Sections 23(9) and 358 assume it is. If you bury it, you have a rights problem and a trust problem.
6. Write down who approved each claim. When a complaint arrives, someone will ask who signed off. Most providers cannot answer.

You do not need new software or a rebrand for any of this. You just need to read your own website the way a regulator would, one sentence at a time.