Folio 05 of 05The keeper
The Donor Conception Registrar
The Donor Conception Registrar is the person the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 requires to be employed, under Part 3 of the Public Administration Act 2004, to carry out the Registrar’s role (s 99), and the Act makes that office keep the Central Register (s 53). The department describes the Registrar as one of its employees, responsible for making sure information is released as the Act requires.
General information about Victorian law, not legal or medical advice. The Registrar’s duties are in the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008; the Department of Health reports on the registers’ progress on its page on managing the donor conception registers.
The office
The office, entry by entry
- Defined in
- Section 3 of the Act: the person employed as Registrar under s 99
- Employed under
- Part 3 of the Public Administration Act 2004
- Works within
- Victoria’s Department of Health
- Keeps
- The Central Register, in a way the Registrar decides
- Receives
- Applications for Central Register information, made under s 56
- In place since
- 1 January 2025, when VARTA’s functions moved to the Secretary and a new Registrar
Duties
What the Act tells the Registrar to do
The department’s statement-of-reasons page puts the role simply: the Registrar manages the Central Register, the record of information about donors and donor-conceived people. Most of that work is set by the Act section by section. This table gathers the duties that bear on the Central Register; it is a selection, and the Act holds the rest.
| Section | The duty |
|---|---|
| s 53 | Keep the Central Register, including, for each donor, the number of people born from treatment using that donor’s gametes |
| s 56 | Receive applications from the people the section lists for information recorded on the Central Register |
| s 57(1) | Give an applicant the information they asked for, except identifying information about another person |
| s 59 | Subject to Division 3A, give identifying information about another person to an applicant born from a donor treatment procedure, when the applicant is an adult or meets the conditions for a child |
| s 63B | After notifying a pre-1998 donor, disclose the donor’s identifying information as soon as reasonably practicable after the earlier of the dates the section sets |
The department’s own summary of the role adds that the Registrar must notify the person an application is about and may ask them for contact preferences, which are legally binding.
Fees
The fee, and when the Registrar may waive it
An application to the Central Register generally carries a fee; for the 2026/2027 financial year the department’s page gave the prescribed fee as $89.46 when it was read on 9 October 2026. In the department’s words, the Registrar may waive the fee in “a variety of circumstances”, among them when:
- the same person has applied before
- a donor sibling of the applicant has applied before
- the applicant is in financial hardship.
The Regulations’ own wording on when no fee is payable is set beside the department’s in Applying to the Central Register.
Explanatory material
Explanatory material and counselling
The 2024 reforms changed how the Registrar prepares people for what a register can tell them. According to the department’s December 2024 guide, the 2024 Regulatory Reform Act removed mandatory counselling for people seeking information from either register, and added a requirement for the Registrar to provide prescribed explanatory material. The guide describes it as a new requirement, so that people have that material to consider.
The department’s Central Register page says the material covers the application process, the consequences of disclosure, and the support services available. Counselling has not gone away: the department says it is free and confidential for people eligible to use either register. For a child applicant, the Act still lists counselling by a Part 6 counsellor and needs that counsellor’s statement on the child’s maturity (s 59(b)).
The same reforms brought in the Statement of Reasons. The guide explains that an applicant’s reasons can be shared with the person the information relates to, where that person is asked to consent to its release, to help them decide. How to write one is covered in Applying to the Central Register.
Origins
How the office began
Before 2025, the Victorian Assisted Reproductive Treatment Authority (VARTA) carried out the functions that now sit with the department. The 2024 Regulatory Reform Act moved them to the Secretary of the Department of Health and to a new Donor Conception Registrar employed in the department, from 1 January 2025. The registers themselves transferred to the department in early 2025.
The work is split. Because regulating treatment and overseeing the registers would sit in different parts of the department, the 2024 amendments to the Regulations replaced each reference to VARTA with either the Secretary or the Registrar, whichever fitted. The Central Register is the Registrar’s to manage.
Progress
Where the work stood on 9 October 2026
The department says it is updating how applications are handled and information is shared, in stages. Its pages, as read on 9 October 2026, said release of non-identifying information from the Central Register had begun, with donor-conceived people’s applications first, and that it expected identifying information to begin to be released in late 2026.
Two groups the office serves have folios of their own: donor-conceived people seeking their donor, and donors from before 1998.