Cosmetic clinics answer to two regulators, and the second one fines harder

A cosmetic clinic posts a before-and-after of a lip filler result. Underneath sits a five-star review from the patient. The caption offers $199 off, this week only, and ends with the hashtag most of the industry uses for anti-wrinkle injections.

Two years ago that post was ordinary. Today it is potentially four separate breaches, under two separate Acts, enforced by two separate regulators, and only one of those regulators is the one clinics worry about.

Most cosmetic advertising guidance written for Australian clinics covers AHPRA and stops. That is the smaller half of the problem. The Health Practitioner Regulation National Law caps an advertising offence at $60,000 for an individual. The Therapeutic Goods Act, which governs the moment a clinic names or hints at the prescription medicine it injects, reaches into the millions.

The layer most guidance misses

Botulinum toxin and dermal fillers containing prescription ingredients are Schedule 4 substances. In Australia, advertising a prescription-only medicine to the public is prohibited outright, and that prohibition lives in the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, not in the National Law.

This distinction matters more than it sounds. A great deal of published commentary attributes the restriction on naming injectable brands to AHPRA, or to a 2025 change in the National Law. It is neither. The prohibition flows from sections 42DL(10) and 42DLB(7) of the Therapeutic Goods Act, and it long predates the cosmetic guidelines. AHPRA's 2025 work sat on top of a restriction that was already there.

The consequence for a clinic is practical. If you fix the AHPRA problems in your advertising and leave the medicine references untouched, you have cleaned up the cheaper offence and left the expensive one running.

What the TGA prohibition actually catches

The obvious version is the brand name. Clinics generally know not to write it, and most stopped years ago.

The rule is considerably wider than that. In a media release on 7 March 2024, the TGA set out that references to cosmetic injectables in advertising are caught even when no brand is named. The prohibited category includes class terms such as "cosmetic injectables" and "wrinkle reduction injections", and extends to acronyms, nicknames, abbreviations and hashtags that a reader would understand as pointing to the medicine.

That last item is where most clinic social accounts sit. The industry's shorthand is not a workaround. It is the thing the guidance names.

On 18 June 2026 the TGA published consolidated guidance titled "Complying with the restrictions on advertising prescription medicines to the public". It walks through the surfaces clinics actually use: business names, logos, online booking systems, social media, price lists, before-and-after photographs and testimonials. If one document is worth an hour of a practice manager's time this year, it is that one.

What AHPRA changed, and when

On 2 September 2025 two AHPRA guidelines took effect. The first covers the practice of non-surgical cosmetic procedures. The second, the one that governs marketing, covers advertising higher risk non-surgical cosmetic procedures.

They did not replace anything. Section 133 of the National Law already prohibited testimonials, misleading claims, inducements without terms, unreasonable expectations of benefit, and encouraging unnecessary use, for every regulated health service in the country. The cosmetic guidelines added a specific layer on top for higher risk work.

Reading the guidelines closely, the obligations fall into three different strengths, and treating them as one undifferentiated blob of rules is how clinics end up over-correcting on the wrong things.

Testimonials

Already unlawful under section 133(1)(c), and the cosmetic guidance tightens the practical expectations around them. A clinic must remove testimonials from surfaces it controls, must not link out to third-party review platforms as a marketing device, and must not re-share or like a patient's post about their result.

The boundary AHPRA draws is clinical versus non-clinical. A review about parking or the receptionist is not a testimonial. A review about whether the treatment worked is. We covered where that line sits, and what to do about Google reviews you did not ask for, in our piece on patient testimonials.

Before-and-after images

This is the rule most often reported wrongly, in both directions. Before-and-after imagery is not banned for cosmetic procedures. It is conditionally restricted, and the conditions are demanding enough that many clinics have decided compliance is more expensive than removal.

The conditions require real patients, no subjects under 18, matched shooting conditions between the two images, no airbrushing or filtering that exaggerates the result, an accompanying statement that outcomes vary between patients, and presentation that does not make the "after" image the dominant element.

There is a second gate. If the imagery depicts a result achieved with a prescription medicine, the TGA restriction applies to the same image, independently of whether AHPRA's conditions are met. Passing the AHPRA test does not clear the Therapeutic Goods Act.

Language

The guidance is specific about the words that cause trouble. "Safe" and "painless" minimise clinical risk. "World renowned" is an unverifiable superiority claim. "Happier you" and "restore self-esteem" promise emotional outcomes no procedure can guarantee.

The common thread is that each phrase makes a promise the clinic cannot stand behind if a patient's result disappoints them.

What the fines have actually been

Maximum penalties make headlines. Issued penalties tell you what enforcement looks like, and in this sector the TGA publishes them.

The pattern is infringement notices, not prosecutions. They are issued to named individuals, including AHPRA-registered practitioners, and they are published.

The January 2026 action is the one worth reading twice. Six individuals, eleven infringement notices, $43,560 in total, and three of the six were AHPRA-registered practitioners. One NSW individual was penalised specifically for advertising botulinum toxin on social media.

A dentist has also been fined $5,328 in connection with unlawful importation of botulinum toxin, which is a reminder that the exposure here is not limited to dedicated cosmetic clinics.

On the AHPRA side, the published figures describe attention rather than punishment. Between September 2022 and March 2025 AHPRA received roughly 360 notifications about non-surgical cosmetic procedures and closed roughly 300 of them, alongside more than 1,500 calls to its cosmetic surgery hotline. In an earlier update covering the period to 25 March 2024, AHPRA reported 713 hotline calls, 214 notifications closed, more than 35 practitioners facing regulatory action, and more than 120 doctors and clinics proactively audited.

AHPRA has not published enforcement statistics specific to the period since the September 2025 guidelines took effect.

What actually changed in 2026

Nothing on the AHPRA side. The two cosmetic guidelines that took effect on 2 September 2025 are still the current version, and no amendment was made during 2026.

The movement was all at the TGA. The 18 June 2026 guidance is the substantive document, and the 1 July 2026 penalty unit increase raised every Commonwealth civil penalty ceiling by about ten per cent.

If you audited your advertising against the AHPRA guidelines in late 2025 and have not looked at it since, the AHPRA half of that work still stands. The half you have not done is the medicine references.

A first pass you can finish this week

The uncomfortable part is that this rulebook penalises exactly the marketing that works in this category. Result photography and patient enthusiasm are the two most persuasive assets a cosmetic clinic has, and Australian law puts hard limits on both.

The clinics handling it well have stopped trying to smuggle those assets past the rules. They compete instead on the things they are free to say: who performs the procedure, what their training is, how the consultation works, what the aftercare involves, and what a patient should expect to happen if they are not happy. None of that is prohibited by either Act, and almost nobody in the sector is doing it well.

Sources

• Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, sections 42DL, 42DLB, 42DLC and 42DMA
• Complying with the restrictions on advertising prescription medicines to the public, TGA, published 18 June 2026
• Referring to cosmetic injectables in advertising, TGA media release, 7 March 2024
• New guidelines for cosmetic procedures, AHPRA, 2 September 2025
• AHPRA cosmetic procedures hub, including both 2025 guidelines
• Guidelines for advertising a regulated health service, AHPRA and the National Boards
• Health Practitioner Regulation National Law Act 2009 (Qld), Schedule, section 133
• Commonwealth penalty unit value, $364 from 1 July 2026, Australian Financial Security Authority
• TGA media releases on cosmetic injectable advertising enforcement, tga.gov.au/news/media-releases

This is general information, not legal advice. The Therapeutic Goods Act and the National Law apply differently depending on your registration, your corporate structure and what you advertise. SwayBlu is a content tool, not a legal advice service. If you are unsure whether specific advertising complies, get advice from a lawyer or contact the TGA and AHPRA directly.