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Overview

If you run outbound batch calling into Australian numbers, the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 requires you to check your call list against the national Do Not Call Register (DNCR), maintained by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), and to keep records proving you did. Voxworks builds DNCR checking into the batch calling workflow and layers two further account-level checks — an opt-out list and a previously-called check — on top of it. This page explains the legal framing, what each check does, how the override and audit trail work, and — because this is a compliance-critical feature — exactly what is and isn’t guaranteed. For the step-by-step operational walkthrough (washing a list, reading the status badges, resolving a credential failure), see DNCR Washing.

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What the law requires

Outbound calling from Australia sits under several pieces of Commonwealth legislation, most directly:
  • Telecommunications Act 1997 — establishes ACMA and the regulatory framework it enforces.
  • Do Not Call Register Act 2006 — requires you to check numbers against the Register and remove (or not call) any match, subject to narrow exemptions (an existing customer relationship, a recent enquiry, and a few others).
  • Spam Act 2003 — governs consent, sender identification, and opt-out for commercial electronic messages and some automated calls.
  • Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017 — sets permitted calling hours, caller identification, and conduct requirements (ending a call and removing a number on request).
  • Privacy Act 1988 — governs how you collect, use, and store personal information gathered on the call.
Voxworks’s outbound scheduler is built with these obligations in mind — business-hours-aware pacing, public holiday exclusion, and the screening checks described below all exist to support compliant campaigns. None of this transfers legal responsibility away from you as the account holder: you remain responsible for the legality of the numbers you call, the consent you rely on, and how you use the platform, and Voxworks’s terms of service require you to indemnify Voxworks against claims arising from your breach of applicable telemarketing or privacy law. Nothing on this page is legal advice — confirm your obligations with your own advisor if outbound compliance is business-critical for your organisation.

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The three screening gates

Batches can be configured with three independent screening gates, set per batch under Batches → (your batch) → Settings → Calling rules → Screening gates: A contact who fails an enabled gate is blocked from dialling and held in the queue with the reason shown. Screening is fail-closed: if a check can’t complete — a DNCR credential or connectivity failure, for example — the contact is not dialled unscreened. It’s held and retried, never called on an unresolved result. The full mechanics of gate evaluation, retry timing, and queue statuses are covered in Batch Screening Gates; opt-out list management is covered in Opt-Outs.

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DNCR washing

The DNCR gate works by “washing” each number against the Register and caching the result for 30 days before it needs rechecking. A wash returns one of three outcomes, shown throughout Contacts and Lists as status badges: Safe to call (not on the Register), On DNC Register, or Invalid number. A contact not yet checked, or whose result has expired, shows Not washed or Unknown.

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Override mechanics and audit trail

A number that comes back On DNC Register doesn’t have to stay unreachable — the Do Not Call Register Act carves out exemptions (an existing business relationship, a recent enquiry, and similar), and Voxworks lets you record that one applies to a specific contact. To override, open the contact and turn on Override DNCR. This opens a Confirm DNCR Override dialog, which requires you to explicitly confirm that:
  • you have obtained explicit consent from the contact to make calls,
  • you have an existing business relationship that permits calling, and
  • you are otherwise in compliance with local DNCR regulations,
alongside a warning that calling DNCR-registered numbers without proper authorisation can carry significant penalties. Confirming records the override on the contact together with who enabled it and when, so every override is attributable and auditable after the fact — not just a silent bypass. Every wash itself is also logged: the numbers submitted, the raw request and response, the result returned for each number, and the account and user that triggered the wash. That log is what you’d point to if ACMA or a complainant ever asked you to demonstrate you checked a number before calling it.

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Shared responsibility

Voxworks provides the checking, the caching, the override record, and the audit log. What it cannot do is decide, on your behalf, whether a given override is legally justified, or whether your calling program as a whole complies with the Spam Act, the Privacy Act, or ACMA’s industry standards. That judgment — and the legal exposure that comes with it — sits with your organisation. Treat the screening gates as a compliance aid that reduces the chance of an accidental breach, not as a guarantee of compliance, and review your overrides periodically to confirm the exemption you recorded still holds.

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Enforcement status

The DNCR gate is fully active: the wash client, the fail-closed screening pass ahead of every batch launch, the override path, and the audit log all run in production. When a batch’s DNCR toggle is on, every queued contact is washed against the register before it dials. The opt-out and previously-called gates work the same way — when their per-batch toggle is on, they run.

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Next Steps

  • DNCR Washing — Operational how-to: wash triggers, status badges, freshness, and the credential-failure toast
  • Batch Screening Gates — How all three gates evaluate, TTLs, lookahead, and queue statuses
  • Opt-Outs — Managing your account’s opt-out list
  • Security & Compliance Overview — Data residency, encryption, and access control across the platform