AHPRA advertising rules for optometrists
Section 133 covers your eye test. But slowing a child's myopia is a restricted representation under the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code, and that is a different Act entirely.
The definition
The TGA counts a claim as restricted if it points to a serious form of a disease, condition, ailment or defect. It counts whether you say it outright or only imply it.
The consequence
The TGA says advertising therapeutic goods to consumers with a restricted representation is an offence, unless the TGA has issued an approval or a permission. There is no third route.
The instrument
The Therapeutic Goods (Restricted Representations, Contact Lenses and Spectacle Lenses) Permission 2025 covers lenses whose certified purpose is correcting refractive errors or controlling myopia. It applies subject to the conditions set out in it.
The 2024 split
Contact lenses are Class IIa medical devices and need ARTG inclusion to be supplied. Since 15 June 2024 prescription spectacle lenses do not. The exemption changed supply, not what you may claim.
The number
Optometry Australia reported that AHPRA received 515 low-risk to moderate-risk advertising complaints in 2018 to 2019. Exactly one was about an optometrist. A low complaint rate measures who is looking.
Today
AHPRA's 2024/25 annual report puts registered optometrists at 7,340, up 4.1 per cent to June 2025. Optometry recorded 81 notifications involving 71 practitioners, under 1 per cent of the workforce.
Who is liable
It reaches the practice, the company that owns it, and the agency writing the copy. AHPRA states the 2022 amendment took the maximum fine per offence to $60,000 for a person and $120,000 for a body corporate.
The verdict
No other registered profession sells you a product on the way out. So one page can answer to three regulators in three different sentences.
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