Is Cold Calling Legal in Australia? B2B Rules for 2026

Is Cold Calling Legal in Australia? B2B Rules for 2026

Updated October 2026. General information, not legal advice. Every rule below links to the official source so you can check the current wording.

Yes, cold calling is legal in Australia, including B2B cold calling, as long as you follow the rules. There is no law that bans calling a business you have never spoken to. What there is, is a set of rules about who you can call, when you can call, what you have to say, what number you show and what you do with the data. Most of them are enforced by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), and the penalties for getting them wrong are real.

"Is cold calling legal in Australia" is one of the first questions I get from founders and heads of sales thinking about outbound. Usually it is asked half-jokingly. It should be asked seriously, because most of the B2B teams I talk to are following the rules by accident rather than by design.

I am Jamie Partridge, founder of Uplift Sales. We run phone-only cold calling programmes for B2B technology companies from Sydney, so these rules are part of how every campaign is set up. This guide covers the four sets of rules that matter for B2B cold calling in Australia:

1. The Do Not Call Register Act 2006
2. The Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017 (the ACMA's calling rules)
3. The Privacy Act 1988 and the Australian Privacy Principles
4. The Spam Act 2003, which matters as soon as you follow a call up with an email

At the end there is a practical compliance checklist you can hand to your SDRs.

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The short answer: legal, with rules

Here is the whole post in one table.

Rule	What it covers	What it means for B2B cold calling
Do Not Call Register Act 2006	Telemarketing calls to numbers on the Register	Business numbers can't be registered, but personal and dual-use mobiles can. Wash your list.
Telemarketing and Research Calls Industry Standard 2017	How every telemarketing call is made	Calling hours, identifying yourself, caller ID on, ending the call when asked
Privacy Act 1988 and APP 7	Personal information used for direct marketing	Opt-outs, telling people where you got their details, data handling
Spam Act 2003	Commercial email, SMS and instant messages	Any follow-up email needs consent, sender ID and an unsubscribe

The rest of this post goes through each one in turn.

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The Do Not Call Register and business numbers

The Do Not Call Register is run for the ACMA. Under the Do Not Call Register Act 2006, you can't make an unsolicited telemarketing call to a number on the Register unless the account holder has consented.

Can business numbers be on the Register?

This is the question that matters most for B2B teams, and the answer is in the ACMA's own consumer FAQs:

• Business numbers can't be registered. The ACMA says business telephone numbers are not eligible for registration.
• Business fax numbers can be. Numbers used mainly for sending and receiving faxes may be registered.
• Dual-use numbers can be. A number used for both business and private purposes may be eligible if it is used mostly for private or domestic purposes.

So a switchboard or an office landline isn't on the Register. The catch for modern B2B outbound is the mobile number. Most of the direct dials we call are mobiles, and plenty of people use one phone for work and home. If that phone is mostly personal, it can legitimately be on the Register, and calling it without consent would be a breach.

Is there a B2B exemption?

No. The ACMA's industry FAQs say a call falls within the definition of a telemarketing call if it has a commercial purpose, even if that isn't its main purpose. Both the person making the call and the business that asked for it to be made are responsible for complying. That second point matters if you use an agency: you carry the risk too.

Consent

The Act allows calls to registered numbers where the account holder has consented, and consent can be express or inferred. One important limit: the Act's consent provisions (Schedule 2) state that consent can't be inferred just because an Australian number has been published. A mobile number on a website or a LinkedIn profile is not consent to be telemarketed if that number is on the Register.

Washing your list

"Washing" means submitting your call list to the Register and removing any numbers that are on it. According to the ACMA's industry FAQs, if a marketer has washed its list against the Register in the 30 days before the call, it won't be in breach for calling a registered number. The ACMA's washing overview explains how to set up an account.

In practice: if your B2B list contains mobiles, wash it, and wash it again at least every 30 days while the campaign runs.

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The ACMA Telemarketing Industry Standard

The second set of rules is the Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017. The ACMA's summary of the industry standards says it applies to anyone who makes, or arranges for someone else to make, telemarketing calls to Australian numbers, including numbers that are not on the Register.

That is the bit most B2B teams miss. Not being on the Register gets a number out of the "do not call" rule. It doesn't switch off the rules on how you call. The Standard is written mostly in consumer terms, and I am not aware of a B2B carve-out. Our approach, and the one I'd recommend, is to follow it on every call.

Permitted calling hours

From the ACMA's industry standards page:

Day	Telemarketing calls allowed
Monday to Friday	9:00am to 8:00pm
Saturday	9:00am to 5:00pm
Sunday	No calls
National public holidays	No calls

National public holidays are New Year's Day, Australia Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, Anzac Day, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. Calls outside these hours are only allowed if the person has consented to a call at that time, and the ACMA's 2017 announcement of the remade standard says that consent must be express.

Time zones matter. The Explanatory Statement to the Standard says the times are measured at the call recipient's usual address. A 9:00am AEST call to Perth lands at 7:00am local time and is outside the permitted hours. If you call nationally from the east coast, set your dialler by the prospect's time zone, not your own.

This also catches out some cold calling advice. You will read (including in some US-centric playbooks) that senior buyers are easier to reach before 9am. In Australia, early-morning telemarketing calls are outside the permitted hours unless you have consent for that time.

What you have to say at the start of the call

The Standard sets out what the caller must say as soon as the call starts. The Explanatory Statement summarises section 9:

• the caller's given name (first name is enough)
• the name of their employer (company name, registered business name or another name the business can readily be identified by)
• the name of the business the call is being made for, if that is different. If an agency calls for you, the prospect must hear your company's name too.
• the purpose of the call

If a call has two purposes, for example a research question and a sales pitch, the ACMA says both must be stated at the start.

On request, the caller must also provide contact details. The Explanatory Statement describes these as a name, an Australian number for voice calls during normal business hours, and at least one accurate and current address.

For your scripts, that means the opener has to identify the caller, the company and the reason for the call up front. A disguised "just following up" opener isn't compliant. We cover compliant openers that still work in our cold calling scripts guide.

Caller ID must be on

The ACMA says a caller must make sure calling line identification (CLI) is enabled when they make or attempt a call. In other words, no private or blocked numbers. The number shown must let the person call back and find out, within a reasonable time, the employer's name, the purpose of the call and who caused it to be made. The ACMA says return-call numbers must remain available for at least 30 days after the call.

If you use local-presence numbers (showing a Sydney number when calling Sydney), those numbers have to be real, answerable numbers that meet these rules.

Ending the call when asked

The caller must end the call immediately if the person asks for the call to end or otherwise indicates they don't want to continue. The Explanatory Statement gives examples of what can count, including "I'm not interested", "I'm on the Do Not Call Register" and "Now is not a good time".

This is where a lot of objection-handling training goes wrong. There is a difference between handling an objection and ignoring a request to end the call. "We already have a provider" is an objection you can explore with one honest question. "I'm not interested, please don't call me" means the call ends. If you want the line drawn properly, see our objection handling guide.

The Standard also requires a call to end if the caller learns the person isn't at their usual address and it is outside permitted hours where they are (unless they ask to continue).

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Privacy Act 1988 and the APPs

The Privacy Act 1988 and the 13 Australian Privacy Principles (APPs) are regulated by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC). They matter for cold calling because a named decision maker's name, title, mobile and email are personal information.

Who it applies to

According to the OAIC's small business guidance, most businesses with an annual turnover of $3 million or less are not covered by the Privacy Act, though there are exceptions (for example businesses that trade in personal information) and small businesses can opt in. If you are over the threshold, or your agency is, the APPs apply.

APP 7: direct marketing

APP 7 covers using personal information for direct marketing, including by telephone. Three points from the OAIC's guidelines matter most for B2B outbound:

• Overlap with the DNC and Spam Acts. APP 7.8 says APP 7 doesn't apply to the extent that the Do Not Call Register Act or the Spam Act applies. Since those Acts cover a lot of telemarketing and email, APP 7 is often the backstop rather than the main rule. The rest of the APPs (collection, use, data quality, security) still apply.
• Opt-outs. If someone asks not to receive direct marketing, you must stop within a reasonable period, which the OAIC says would generally be no more than 30 days.
• Source of information. If someone asks where you got their details, you must tell them unless that is impracticable or unreasonable, again generally within 30 days.

What this means in practice

• Know where every contact on your list came from (data provider, event, inbound, referral) and record it.
• Keep a suppression list of everyone who has asked not to be contacted, and apply it to every list, every campaign and every channel.
• Don't buy lists you can't trace. If you can't answer "where did you get my number?", you have a problem.
• Store prospect data in your CRM, not in spreadsheets passed around by email.

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Spam Act 2003: why it matters if you follow up by email

The Spam Act 2003 doesn't cover voice calls. It covers commercial electronic messages: email, SMS, MMS and instant messages. The ACMA's consumer FAQs point out that being on the Do Not Call Register does not stop SMS marketing, because that is covered by the Spam Act instead.

It becomes relevant to cold calling the moment your SDR or AE sends a follow-up email after a call. According to the ACMA's guidance on avoiding spam, a commercial message must:

• Have consent. Express consent, or inferred consent in limited circumstances. Under the Act, consent can't be inferred just because an email address has been published. There is a narrow exception for addresses that are conspicuously published for a person in their work role, where the message is relevant to that role and the publication doesn't say they don't want unsolicited messages. "Their email is on Apollo" is not conspicuous publication.
• Identify the sender and include accurate contact details.
• Include a working unsubscribe. The ACMA's unsubscribe fact sheet says unsubscribe requests must be actioned within five working days.

The ACMA also says the Spam Act applies to businesses of all sizes, and that the sender has to be able to prove consent.

The practical point for B2B teams: the safest follow-up email is one the prospect asked for on the call. "Can you send me something?" followed by a short, relevant email with clear sender details is a very different thing from adding everyone you called to an automated sequence. Uplift Sales is phone-only, so we don't send cold email at all, but your own team's follow-up still needs to meet these rules.

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Penalties and enforcement

The ACMA actively enforces these rules. According to its compliance and breaches page, penalties are civil rather than criminal. At the time of writing that page lists:

• infringement notices of up to $222,000 for each day on which contraventions occurred
• a court-ordered maximum of $2.22 million for each day on which contraventions occurred
• penalties of up to $250,000 for each contravention of the industry standards

Penalty amounts change over time, so check the ACMA's current figures. Recent ACMA enforcement examples include:

• 2025: the ACMA welcomed a $1.5 million penalty ordered by the Federal Court in a telemarketing case involving calls to numbers on the Do Not Call Register.
• 2026: TAB paid $2.7 million for telemarketing and spam breaches.
• 2024: Outdoor Supacentre paid a $300,000 penalty for spam breaches.

Most of the ACMA's published cases involve consumer marketing, but the rules don't stop applying because the buyer is a business. The bigger day-to-day risk for B2B teams is reputational. Technical and executive buyers in Australia talk to each other, and a pushy call at 7am Perth time or a refusal to take "no" sticks to your brand.

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A practical B2B cold calling compliance checklist

Hand this to your SDR team or ask your agency to show you how they meet each point.

Before the campaign

• Know the source of every contact on the list, and record it in the CRM
• Wash any list that contains mobiles or possible personal numbers against the Do Not Call Register
• Re-wash at least every 30 days while calling
• Apply your suppression list (previous opt-outs) to every new list
• Check whether the Privacy Act applies to you and to your agency

Dialler and numbers

• Caller ID enabled on every call, no private or blocked numbers
• Every outbound number can be called back and identifies who you are and why you called
• Calling windows set by the prospect's local time zone: 9am to 8pm weekdays, 9am to 5pm Saturdays
• No calls on Sundays or national public holidays

On the call

• Opener gives the caller's first name, company, the company being represented (if different) and the purpose of the call
• Contact details ready if the prospect asks for them
• "Where did you get my number?" answered honestly
• Call ended immediately when the prospect asks, and the contact added to the suppression list

After the call

• Follow-up emails only where there is consent, with sender details and a working unsubscribe
• Unsubscribes and opt-outs actioned within five working days for email and well within 30 days for calls
• Prospect data stored in the CRM, access controlled

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How Uplift Sales runs compliant cold calling campaigns

We are a phone-only B2B cold calling agency based in Sydney. Compliance is part of the campaign setup, not an afterthought:

• Lists are checked against the Do Not Call Register before calling, because most of the direct dials we use are mobiles.
• One suppression list across every campaign. If someone asks not to be called, that carries across every client we work for.
• Calling hours are set by the prospect's time zone, so Perth and Brisbane prospects get called in their hours, not ours.
• Openers identify the caller, Uplift Sales and the client and give the reason for the call up front. Scripts are reviewed with you before launch.
• Caller ID is always on, using real, answerable numbers.
• "No" means the call ends. Our SDRs are coached on the difference between an objection and a request to stop.
• No cold email or LinkedIn outreach. We are phone only. Any follow-up email your team sends after a meeting is booked is yours, and should meet the Spam Act rules above.

If you are weighing up agencies, ask each one to walk you through how they handle every item on the checklist above. Our cold calling agency page covers how our programmes run, and our guide to the best cold calling agencies covers how to compare providers. If you are also budgeting, our cold calling cost guide breaks down the pricing models.

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Frequently asked questions

Is cold calling legal in Australia?

Yes. B2B cold calling is legal in Australia as long as you follow the rules. Telemarketing calls are regulated by the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 and the Telemarketing and Research Calls Industry Standard 2017, both enforced by the ACMA. The Privacy Act 1988 applies to the personal information you use, and the Spam Act 2003 applies to follow-up emails and SMS.

Can business numbers be registered on the Do Not Call Register?

No. The ACMA says business telephone numbers aren't eligible, although business fax numbers can be registered. A number used for both work and private purposes may be eligible if it is used mostly for private purposes, which is why B2B teams calling mobiles should still wash their lists.

What hours can you cold call in Australia?

9am to 8pm on weekdays and 9am to 5pm on Saturdays, measured at the prospect's location. No calls on Sundays or national public holidays unless the person has consented to a call at that time.

Do the telemarketing rules apply to B2B calls?

There is no general B2B exemption. The Industry Standard applies to telemarketing calls to Australian numbers, including numbers not on the Register. Follow its calling hours, identification, caller ID and call-ending rules on every call.

What must a cold caller say at the start of a call?

Their first name, their employer's name, the name of the business they are calling for (if different) and the purpose of the call. On request they must also provide contact details.

Do I need to wash my list against the Do Not Call Register?

If any numbers could be on the Register, yes. A wash in the 30 days before the call protects you from a breach for calling a registered number.

Does the Spam Act apply to cold calling?

No, it covers email, SMS and instant messages, not voice calls. It applies to any follow-up email, which needs consent, sender identification and an unsubscribe actioned within five working days.

What are the penalties for breaking telemarketing rules?

Civil penalties, infringement notices and court-enforceable undertakings. Recent ACMA cases include a $1.5 million Federal Court penalty in 2025 and TAB paying $2.7 million in 2026.

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This article is general information, not legal advice. Rules and penalty amounts change. Check the current requirements with the ACMA, the Do Not Call Register and the OAIC, or speak to a lawyer about how they apply to your business.

Want outbound that is compliant by design? Book a 20-minute call and we will walk you through how a phone-only campaign would run for your ICP, including how we handle the Register, calling hours and opt-outs.