Australian Donor Registries: What Are the Lessons Learnt? Stephen Page Presents at Canadian Fertility Law Conference
Stephen Page, Director at Page Provan Family & Fertility Lawyers and Australia’s leading surrogacy lawyer, was honoured to present at the Fertility Law: Current and Emerging Issues conference at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto on 13 April 2026.
As part of an international panel on DNA, databases and disclosure, Stephen joined Jo-an van der Tol from The Netherlands and Fiona Duffy from Ireland to share lessons from their respective countries’ experience with donor registries. Stephen’s paper focused on what Australia’s complex, fragmented approach to donor registration has taught us—and what other countries can learn from it.
[Download Stephen’s full paper (PDF) →]
Australia’s Donor Registry Landscape: A Federation’s Challenge
Australia is a federation of six states, two territories, and a Commonwealth Parliament—and its approach to donor registry regulation reflects that complexity. Every IVF clinic in Australia is required to comply with the National Health and Medical Research Council’s Ethical Guidelines on the Use of Assisted Reproductive Technology, and to hold its own donor registry. Six of Australia’s eight jurisdictions have now legislated for state or territory donor registries, each administered by a different government body and each operating under different rules.
The result is a patchwork of six registries—most of which cannot share information with each other—covering a country of 27 million people. As Stephen puts it, this is “how not to do it.”
17 Lessons from Australia’s Experience
Stephen’s paper distils Australia’s experience into 17 practical lessons for any jurisdiction designing or reforming a donor registry. Here are the key themes:
Lesson 1: Appoint a Responsive and Efficient Registry
Who administers the registry matters enormously. Victoria’s VARTA—once seen as a trailblazer—was abolished at the end of 2024 after years of staff turnover, loss of its counselling operation, and a failure to properly track compliance with family limits. Western Australia’s donor registry was similarly found to be “not fit for purpose” following the 2018–2019 Allan Review, with clinics required to submit data on floppy disks long after the technology had become obsolete.
Queensland’s new registry, which commenced on 1 March 2026, was deliberately placed under the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages—seen as efficient, customer-focused, and responsive to feedback—rather than Queensland Health, which is perceived as large and bureaucratic.
Lesson 2: Keep Regulations Current with Technology
Outdated regulations create real-world chaos. Western Australian clinics were required by regulation to submit data on floppy disks years after the technology had been abandoned—forcing clinics to maintain old computers solely for this purpose. Manual data entry led to inevitable errors. Regulations must be reviewed and updated regularly to reflect how data is actually collected and stored.
Lesson 3: Minimise Duplication for IVF Clinics
Every IVF clinic in Australia already submits extensive data to the Australian and New Zealand Assisted Reproductive Database (ANZARD). Requiring clinics to separately submit similar data to state donor registries—often in different formats, on different timelines—creates duplication, increases costs, and reduces data quality. Those costs are inevitably passed on to patients.
Lesson 4: Report Annually, Not Quarterly
Requiring quarterly data reporting creates a fundamental problem: pregnancy outcomes are not yet known at the time of reporting. ANZARD’s annual reporting model—with a two-year lag to capture birth outcomes—produces far more accurate and useful data. Quarterly snapshots without outcome data are of limited value.
Lessons 5 & 6: Web-Based Data Entry and Adequate Resourcing
A web-based portal with real-time validation—as used by ANZARD—prevents garbage-in, garbage-out data problems. Equally, registries must be adequately staffed. The Western Australian registry at its lowest point was effectively managed by the equivalent of one full-time position, spread across multiple staff with other responsibilities.
Lesson 7: Be Clear About Who Is and Who Is Not a Donor
It might seem obvious, but statutory definitions of “donor” have caused significant legal disputes across multiple Australian states. In Western Australia, a court had to determine whether a deceased man’s sperm—retrieved at his former partner’s request—constituted a “donation.” In Victoria, VARTA incorrectly classified intended parents in surrogacy arrangements as donors—a position it was forced to abandon after a tense confrontation with IVF clinics. New South Wales Health continues to take the same incorrect view. Queensland’s 2024 Act got it right, after Stephen made submissions on the point.
Lesson 8: Define Family Limits Clearly—Including Where Families Are Located
Family limits—the maximum number of families a single donor can create—vary significantly across Australian jurisdictions. But equally important is where those families must be located for the limit to apply. Victoria and New South Wales have both taken the position that their family limits apply worldwide, without any clear statutory basis for that interpretation. In NSW, this led to an immediate shortage of compliant donor sperm and reports of prices rising from approximately $2,000 to as much as $62,000. Queensland and the ACT got this right in their 2024 legislation—after Stephen made submissions urging clarity on the point.
Lesson 9: Listen to Donor-Conceived People and Ensure Retrospective Transparency
One of the most powerful sections of Stephen’s paper is his account of Narelle Grech—a donor-conceived woman who died in 2013 from inherited bowel cancer at the age of 31, having been denied knowledge of her genetic origins. Her advocacy led directly to Victoria’s 2015 retrospective transparency laws, known as Narelle’s Law. South Australia followed in 2024, and Queensland from 1 March 2026.
The right of donor-conceived people to know their identity is enshrined in Articles 7 and 8 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. As Stephen notes, Australia—a signatory to the Convention—has been slow to uphold it. The ACT has legislated for Part 1 of its retrospective transparency reforms but is yet to introduce Part 2. Western Australia has committed to retrospective transparency when its 2025 Act commences.
Lesson 10: Enable Registries to Talk to Each Other
Six donor registries operating in silos—unable to share information with each other—fundamentally undermines the purpose of having a registry at all. If the goal is to prevent consanguinity by enforcing family limits, fragmented registries that cannot communicate are a structural failure. The Hunt and Swift Review, commissioned by the Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand, recommended a single national donor registry in 2024—with a ten-year implementation timeline given the need for cooperation across nine governments.
Lesson 11: Be Careful About Retrospective Application of New Requirements
Queensland’s 2024 Act introduced a requirement for donors to provide their phone number and email address—and applied it retrospectively to gametes already in storage. The result: IVF clinics told patients their stored sperm was non-compliant and could not be used. A media storm followed, a band-aid fix was applied, and legislative amendments were needed. Retrospective requirements must be carefully considered before enactment.
Lesson 12: Aim for Uniformity
Australia’s five largest IVF providers operate across multiple state borders. Compliance with eight different regulatory regimes—with minor but meaningful differences between them—increases costs that are passed on to patients. A uniform national model, or at minimum state laws based on a common template, is the goal.
Lesson 13: Consult Widely and Draft Carefully
The ACT gave stakeholders two weeks’ notice to make submissions before legislating. Queensland gave 13 days. Both jurisdictions required subsequent amendments to fix errors that proper consultation would have caught. The Queensland Minister responsible for the 2025 amendments acknowledged that the original Act was “drafted in just 10 weeks—for something that the Office of Parliamentary Counsel say should take 12 months.” Complex legislation requires time, expertise, and genuine engagement with stakeholders.
Lessons 14–17: Private Donations, Surrogacy, Data Retention and International Collaboration
Stephen’s remaining lessons address the growing challenge of private donations (estimated to equal the number of clinic-based donations), the case for including surrogacy births in donor registries (currently only NSW does so), the importance of long-term data retention by clinics (up to 99 years in some jurisdictions), and the value of international collaboration—the very purpose of the Toronto conference.
Why This Matters for Australian Families
For Australians navigating donor conception—whether as intended parents, donors, or donor-conceived people—the fragmented and inconsistent nature of Australia’s donor registry system has real consequences. Access to information about genetic origins, medical history, and donor siblings varies dramatically depending on which state you live in or were conceived in.
Reform is underway. The Australian Law Reform Commission is expected to be given the task of reviewing donor regulation, following a referral agreed by Australian Health Ministers in September 2025—though the formal referral had not yet been made at the time of Stephen’s paper.
For those with questions about donor conception law, surrogacy, or fertility law in Australia, contact the team at Page Provan for expert advice.
About Stephen Page
When it comes to surrogacy and fertility law in Australia, no one has more experience or deeper expertise than Stephen Page. A director of Page Provan Family & Fertility Lawyers in Brisbane, Stephen has been advising clients on surrogacy matters since 1988—making him the most experienced surrogacy lawyer in the country, with over 2,100 surrogacy journeys to his name across Australia and 39 other countries.
An Accredited Family Law Specialist since 1996, Stephen advises most Australian IVF clinics on third-party reproduction regulatory issues, serves as Secretary of the Fertility Society of Australia and New Zealand, and sits on international committees including the American Bar Association’s ART Committee. He is the author of When Not If: Surrogacy for Australians (2022) and International Assisted Reproductive Technology (2024), and is recognised internationally as a leading voice on surrogacy and fertility law reform.
For expert advice on donor conception, surrogacy, or any aspect of fertility law, contact Stephen Page and the team at Page Provan.
