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Folio 02 of 05The right to know

The right to know your donor in Victoria

In Victoria, an adult born from a donor treatment procedure who applies to the Central Register must be given identifying information about another person: s 59 of the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008 makes that a duty of the Donor Conception Registrar, subject to Division 3A. For donors the department calls post-1998, it says, donor-conceived people receive identifying information once the donor has been told. The Act grounds all of this in a principle: children born from donated gametes have a right to information about their donors.

On this folio the gold thread lies across the last column, the one headed with what the law lets a person read.

General information about Victorian law, not legal or medical advice. The law is the Assisted Reproductive Treatment Act 2008; the Department of Health explains the process on its Central Register page.

The principle

Where the right starts

Section 5 of the Act sets out principles that Parliament intends to be given effect whenever the Act is administered, its functions are carried out, or an activity it regulates takes place. Paragraph (c) is the one this folio is about: children born as a result of donated gametes have a right to information about their donors. The other principles are in the Act itself.

The national picture points the same way. The NHMRC’s ethical guidelines for assisted reproductive technology say a person conceived with donated gametes is “entitled to know the details of their genetic origins”. Those are ethical guidelines, not a law; in Victoria, the right is written into the Act.

Kinds of information

Identifying and non-identifying

Non-identifying

General information that does not reveal who a person is, in the department’s words. Under s 57(1), the Registrar must give any applicant the information they asked for, except identifying information about someone else.

Identifying

Details that could reveal who someone is; the department gives full name, date of birth and unique donor code as examples. It can be asked for only about people directly connected through donor conception, and never about donor siblings who share the same donor.

A third kind of request needs no one else’s consent. Anyone can ask for a copy of their own Central Register record, though the department notes that it holds only information about the person asking, not about their donors or anyone else linked to them through donor conception.

Section 59

The duty, as the Act sets it out

Section 59 applies when the Registrar receives an application under s 56 from a person born as a result of a donor treatment procedure. Subject to Division 3A, the Registrar must then disclose identifying information about another person in either of two cases. Here they are in the Act’s order, in plain words, with its “or” and “and” kept where the Act puts them.

Section 59: the Registrar must disclose

  1. (a)the applicant is an adult; or
  2. (b)the applicant is a child, and
    1. (i)a parent or guardian of the applicant has consented to the application being made; or
    2. (ii)a Part 6 counsellor has counselled the applicant; and
    3. (iii)the Part 6 counsellor has given the Registrar a statement that the applicant is “sufficiently mature to understand the consequences” of disclosure from the Central Register.

That is the Act as it stands in authorised version 031: for a child applicant, s 59(b) still lists counselling by a Part 6 counsellor in (ii) and a statement from that counsellor on the child’s maturity in (iii). The department’s December 2024 guide said the amended Act would no longer require counselling to be provided or offered before register information is released, and that the requirement for a counsellor to confirm a child’s maturity would stay. Both sources keep a counsellor’s part for a child applicant. This site does not say how (i), (ii) and (iii) combine for any one child; the Act’s words are above, and the Donor Conception Registrar applies them.

Timing

When the information is released

The department explains that the release process depends on when the treatment or donation took place, because the law at the time decided what identifying information had to be recorded. For donors the department calls post-1998, it says, donor-conceived people or their descendants are given identifying information once the donor has been told. Donors from before 1998 have their own timetable, set out in Donors from before 1998.

On 9 October 2026, the department’s page said it expected releases of identifying information to begin in late 2026.

The donor’s side

What donors are told when they donate

The right is not a surprise to a donor. When a donor consents under s 16, s 19 requires the provider (or a doctor carrying out artificial insemination outside a registered provider) to give them written advice about, among other matters, the rights of anyone born from a donor treatment procedure, of that person’s parents and of others to have information disclosed under Division 3 of Part 6.

Contact

Knowing is not the same as contact

Receiving a name does not settle whether two people meet. The department says the Registrar must tell the person being asked about, and may invite them to state contact preferences, which are legally binding. It also says those preferences last five years and the applicant must agree to respect them, and that where they exist the applicant signs an undertaking to do so, with penalties for a breach. For a donor from before 1998, the Act requires the undertaking before the donor’s identifying information is released, whether or not a preference has been lodged yet. More is in Donors from before 1998.

The steps of an application, from the Statement of Reasons to the fee, are in Applying to the Central Register.