If someone reports your clinic's ads to AHPRA, the complaint goes in on a criminal offence form. That sounds scary, but it almost never ends the way you fear. AHPRA says most cases start with a letter. The letter tells you the ad breaks the National Law and asks you to fix it within 30 days. In most cases, AHPRA closes the matter once you fix it. The catch is who counts as responsible. Whoever signs off the content is on the hook. That can be you, your practice company and your agency, all at once.
Why does an ad complaint go in on a criminal offences form?
Breaking the health ad rules is a criminal offence, so the complaint uses the criminal form.
When you hear "AHPRA complaint", you probably picture a notification. A notification is a concern about a practitioner's health, conduct or work. Ads are handled in a different place. AHPRA's page on making an advertising complaint says it plainly. Breaking the ad rules is a criminal offence. To complain about an ad, a person fills in the criminal offences form.
That sounds much worse than it is. The same page goes on to say something kinder. If AHPRA rates a breach as low or medium risk to the public, it may handle it by letter and paperwork. It does not have to go to court.
So the door says criminal offence, but the room behind it is mostly letters. You need to know both halves. Most clinic owners have only ever heard one.
What does AHPRA actually do with the complaint?
AHPRA takes 3 steps, always in the same order. It reviews, then it assesses, then it acts.
AHPRA sets out the whole process on its how we manage advertising complaints page. It says it reviews every ad complaint it gets.
Review. AHPRA checks that the complaint is about an ad for a health service. It looks for any unlawful wording. Then it works out who is responsible for the ad. People skip that last step, but it is the one that shapes your year. If the complaint is thin, AHPRA will try to contact the person who made it. If it cannot reach them, it may close the matter there.
Assess. Next, AHPRA rates the risk of each breach it found. It says it will look at past complaints about you. It will also check whether you have a history of ads that broke the rules. Your first letter and your fourth letter are treated very differently.
Action. This is the part to remember. AHPRA says most cases start with a letter. The letter says your ad breaks the National Law and asks you to fix it within 30 days. AHPRA sends some learning resources with it. In most cases, once you fix the ad, AHPRA closes the matter.
One more thing can happen quietly at this stage. If the complaint might matter to another body, AHPRA may pass it on. It names the Therapeutic Goods Administration (the TGA, which oversees medicines) and the ACCC as examples. So a page about a prescription medicine can become a TGA problem after AHPRA is done with it.
Who is responsible for the ad?
The person who signs off the content is responsible. Owning the website or pressing publish does not decide it.
This may be the most useful line in Australian health ad rules. You will find it tucked inside AHPRA's advertising compliance and enforcement strategy. It says the person or business that controls part or all of an ad is responsible for it. Control means who approves the content. AHPRA then adds one short rule that settles most arguments. You must check any content that other people write for you.
Read that twice. It does not say the registered practitioner is always the one responsible. It says control is the test. So one homepage can have 3 responsible parties at once. There is the practitioner whose name is on it. There is the company that runs the clinic. And there is the agency that wrote and approved the claims.
Section 133 is the part of the National Law that sets the health ad rules. Section 133(2) gives one exception. You do not break the rule just because your business prints or publishes an ad for someone else. So a printer is safe, and a platform is safe. An agency that was handed finished copy and simply put it live may also be safe. But an agency that wrote the claim is not just printing someone else's ad. It wrote the ad.
Does reporting your marketing agency move the blame off you?
No, it does not. It can add a second responsible party, but you stay on the hook too.
When you find a breach, you may want it on record that the agency wrote it. That is a fair instinct, and it is worth writing down. But it will not protect you. If you approved the page, you controlled the ad. AHPRA's strategy says you must check content that others write for you. Signing off without reading still counts as signing off.
What a report can do is bring a second party to AHPRA's attention. That party faces quite different risks to you. The two of you also go down different paths.
Say you are a registered practitioner and you do not fix the ad when asked. AHPRA says it may propose conditions on your registration that stop you advertising. Now say the responsible party is not a registered practitioner, like a marketing company. AHPRA says it may take them to court if they do not fix the ad.
Hardly anyone in the industry mentions this gap. Your registration carries risk, but it also gives AHPRA a fair, middle step before court. A marketing company has no registration to put conditions on. So the only step left against it is the one that ends in court.
When does a letter turn into something worse?
It gets worse in 3 cases. You do not fix the ad, you have broken the rules before, or the breach was serious from the start.
The strategy spells out all 3, and it sorts them into levels.
- Low risk, first time. AHPRA writes to tell you the ad breaks the rules. It sends resources, gives you a deadline and explains how it will check, such as with an audit.
- Low risk, with history. If you have broken the ad rules before, AHPRA treats a low-risk breach as medium risk instead. Your record changes the level, and not just the tone of the letter.
- Medium risk or repeat. You get a letter first, and then AHPRA checks your ads with targeted audits. Say you have not fixed the ad, or you have a history of even low-risk breaches. You then get a show cause letter, which asks you to explain why AHPRA should not act. It proposes conditions that limit how you can advertise, and it gives you a new deadline.
- Conditions imposed. Before the conditions come off, you must show that you understand the ad rules. If you keep breaking the rules after that, AHPRA may refer you to a tribunal.
- High risk. The strategy says some high-risk cases will go straight to court or to disciplinary action. You do not get a warning letter for these.
One more line applies at every level. AHPRA says very serious breaches that put the public at real risk of harm may go to court even after you fix the ad. Deleting the page does not wipe the slate clean every time.
What are the real penalties in 2026?
The maximum is $60,000 per offence for a person and $120,000 per offence for a company.
Those are the current maximums in section 133 of the National Law, as set out in the Queensland version current at 10 April 2026. Western Australia did not take up the increase, so different penalties apply there.
Here is the awkward part, and it matters if you check this yourself. AHPRA's enforcement strategy still shows the old maximums. Those were $5,000 for a person and $10,000 for a company. The strategy is simply out of date. It started on 14 December 2020. The penalties went up in a 2022 change to the law. AHPRA's own page has a note saying it will update the strategy at its next review.
So if you read only the strategy, you walk away with a figure that is 12 times too small. Read the law for the number, and read the strategy for the process.
The current maximums come from the Queensland version of the National Law, current at 10 April 2026. The lower pair are the maximums from before 2022. AHPRA's ad strategy still shows them because it has not been rewritten since 14 December 2020. Western Australia did not take up the increase.
There is one more twist in the maths. AHPRA notes that those maximums apply to one-off breaches. A breach that keeps going may count as several offences. So a claim repeated on your homepage, 6 service pages and a booking page may not count as just one.
What should you do the day the letter arrives?
Treat the 30 days as the whole game. By AHPRA's own account, it usually is.
- Read what was actually flagged. The letter names the ad. Fix that first, before anyone argues about whether the rule is fair.
- Look for the same wording everywhere else. The flagged claim might also sit on 5 other pages, your Google Business Profile and a booking email. If you fix only the named page, the problem stays. AHPRA checks that you have fixed things, sometimes with an audit.
- Work out who approved it. You are not hunting for someone to blame. You need to know who is responsible for the ad, and there may be more than one.
- Write down the fix and the date. AHPRA looks at your history when it rates the next risk. A clean, dated record of your fix is worth having.
- Change how you approve copy, not just the sentence. If the breach came through an agency, it will come back the same way. That changes only when someone checks copy before it goes live.
Here is the good news. AHPRA is not the aggressive one in this story. Its usual approach is a letter and a month to fix things. The first breach is rarely what leads to conditions on a registration. The usual cause is a clinic that fixed one page, left the claim everywhere else and then got a second complaint.
This article explains how AHPRA handles ad complaints. It is general information, not legal advice. If AHPRA has written to you, get advice from your professional indemnity insurer or a health lawyer.
