Running a Giveaway in Australia: Permit Requirements by State

Ask whether a TikTok giveaway is legal in the US, the UK, or Canada, and the answer is a single national framework. Ask the same question about Australia, and the honest answer is "it depends which state your entrants live in." Australia regulates trade promotions at the state and territory level, not federally, which means the exact same giveaway can be permit-free in Queensland and require a formal licence application in New South Wales, purely because of where the entrants happen to be.

This is the detail that trips up brands and creators running a national TikTok audience, since a TikTok giveaway rarely stays inside one state's borders. Here is what the term trade promotion actually means in Australia, which states require a permit and at what prize value, and how to think about compliance when your entrants could be anywhere in the country.

What makes a giveaway a "trade promotion"

Australian regulators use the term trade promotion for exactly the kind of giveaway most brands and creators run: a competition or prize draw where entry is free, other than the ordinary cost of buying the promoted product if that is the entry mechanism, and where the prize is awarded as marketing activity rather than for fundraising. That last distinction matters, because a charity raffle sits under entirely different rules than a brand's TikTok comment giveaway.

Within trade promotions, the law separates games of chance from games of skill. A random draw, whether it is pulled from comments, entry forms, or a hat, is a game of chance, and games of chance are the ones that can trigger a permit requirement once the prize value crosses a state's threshold. A genuine skill-based competition, judged on merit rather than randomness, generally sits outside the permit system entirely, because there is no lottery element to regulate. A comment-to-win TikTok giveaway, by its nature, is a game of chance, so it is the category this guide focuses on.

The baseline that applies everywhere: the Australian Consumer Law

Before getting into the state-by-state permit differences, one rule applies uniformly no matter where in Australia your entrants live. Section 18 of the Australian Consumer Law prohibits misleading or deceptive conduct in trade or commerce, and that covers how you advertise and run a giveaway. Vague promises, overstated odds of winning, or terms and conditions that quietly contradict what your video actually said all risk breaching this section, independent of any state permit question. Clear, accurate rules, published where entrants can actually see them, are not just good practice here, they are the one compliance requirement that never changes based on your audience's location.

States that do not require a permit

Four jurisdictions let you run a trade promotion lottery without applying for a permit at all, provided you meet a handful of conditions that vary slightly by state.

Victoria does not require a permit for a trade promotion, with the main condition being that any entry cost, where one exists, is capped at a nominal amount, commonly cited around one dollar. The Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission oversees the space, but a genuinely free-entry giveaway generally clears its rules without any application.

Queensland similarly requires no permit, as long as entry is free and the prize itself does not fall into a restricted category. Queensland's approach is administered informally through Queensland Government business guidance rather than a licensing office, which keeps the process light for straightforward giveaways.

Western Australia also skips the permit requirement for a free-entry trade promotion, through the Department of Local Government, Sport and Cultural Industries, with the same theme of prohibited prize categories, including things like surgical or medical procedures, carrying over from other states.

Tasmania rounds out the no-permit group. Its Department of Treasury and Finance does not require a licence for a trade promotion, provided that where a purchase-linked entry exists, it does not exceed the ordinary market price of the good being bought, meaning you cannot inflate a product's price to fund the prize pool.

None of these four states are a free pass to skip terms and conditions or ignore the Australian Consumer Law. They simply remove the extra layer of a licensing application, which is a real time and cost saving if your entrants are concentrated there.

States and territories that require a permit

Four jurisdictions take the opposite approach and require you to apply for and hold a permit once your prize value crosses a set threshold.

New South Wales sets its threshold at a combined prize pool value of ten thousand dollars. Cross that figure and you need what NSW calls an Authority to Conduct a Trade Promotion Lottery, issued through NSW Fair Trading. The promotion still has to meet the underlying conditions, free entry, a genuine game of chance rather than skill, a real connection to promoting the sponsor's goods or services, and a nominated draw date, but once the prize pool passes ten thousand dollars, the authority becomes mandatory rather than optional.

South Australia runs a tiered system through Consumer and Business Services. A minor trade promotion, with a prize pool under five thousand dollars, generally does not need a full licence. Cross five thousand dollars and you need a major trade promotion licence, and separately, any promotion using instant win formats like scratch or break-open tickets needs its own instant prize promotion licence regardless of the prize value involved. South Australia also allows a purchase-linked entry route where a phone-based entry costs a small, capped amount, commonly cited around fifty cents plus GST, as an alternative to a fully free entry, and the promotion generally has to conclude within twelve months of starting.

The Australian Capital Territory requires a permit once the total prize value exceeds three thousand dollars, the lowest threshold of the group, issued by the ACT Gambling and Racing Commission through Access Canberra. Before a lottery of this kind is advertised or run in the ACT, the Commission generally has to approve it first, which means the application needs to be lodged and cleared before launch, not after the fact.

The Northern Territory applies its own tiered structure as well, with a threshold around five thousand dollars triggering the requirement for a minor lottery approval, and prize pools above roughly twenty thousand dollars stepping up into major lottery territory, both administered through the Northern Territory's licensing framework. As with the other threshold states, the exact figures and process details are the kind of thing that gets revised from time to time, so treat these as the current shape of the rule rather than a number to rely on without a final check before you launch.

Permit numbers usually have to be shown

Where a permit is required, holding it is only half the job. Regulators typically require the resulting permit number to be displayed wherever the promotion's conditions specify, which commonly includes the promotion's terms and conditions, the entry landing page if there is one, and sometimes the advertising itself. For a TikTok giveaway this usually means the permit number belongs in your published rules and, depending on the specific permit's conditions, potentially referenced in the video or caption too. Treat this as a real condition of the permit rather than an afterthought, since a valid permit displayed incorrectly can still leave you out of compliance with its own terms.

Why this matters more for TikTok than for a print promotion

A trade promotion permit system built decades ago assumed a promotion largely stayed within the region it was advertised in. A TikTok giveaway does not respect that assumption at all. A creator based in Melbourne can post a video that reaches entrants in Sydney, Adelaide, and Canberra within hours, which means a giveaway that would be permit-free if it only ran in Victoria can quietly pick up New South Wales, South Australian, and ACT entrants the moment it goes even modestly viral.

The practical response most brands and legal advisors land on is to plan for the strictest applicable jurisdiction rather than assume your audience will stay contained. If your prize value sits above the ACT's three thousand dollar threshold and your giveaway is open nationally, the safest assumption is that you need to either hold the relevant permits for every threshold state your entrants might realistically come from, or explicitly restrict entry to residents of states where no permit is required, and state that restriction clearly in your rules from the outset. Quietly hoping no ACT or South Australian resident enters is not a compliance strategy, and if a winner turns out to live in a permit state you did not account for, unwinding that after the draw is far messier than planning for it up front.

Building this into your entry rules

Whatever mix of states your giveaway reaches, the fix starts in the same place every other country's rules point to: clear, published conditions that state exactly who can enter, how the prize pool is valued, how the winner is chosen, and which permits, if any, apply. A set of official giveaway rules built before you launch is the natural place to capture eligibility restrictions by state, the permit numbers a regulator requires you to display, and the total prize value that determines which threshold you are working against. If you are still deciding whether you even need a written set of rules for a smaller giveaway, the broader guide on whether you need official rules for a giveaway covers when that step becomes worth the effort regardless of jurisdiction.

A practical checklist before you launch in Australia

Work out your total prize pool value first, since every threshold in this guide is keyed to that figure, not to the value of any single item.

Identify where your realistic entrant base sits. A giveaway promoted only to a small local following behaves very differently from one riding a viral push that could reach every state at once.

Check the current threshold and permit process for any state your entrants might come from, since the dollar figures and application steps in this guide are the current shape of a system that state regulators do revise, and a quick check against the relevant regulator before launch costs far less than fixing a mistake after a winner is drawn.

Decide whether to hold the necessary permits for national reach or restrict entry geographically, and state that restriction explicitly in your published rules if you choose the second option.

Confirm your entry mechanic is genuinely free, or that any purchase-linked entry meets the specific conditions the relevant state allows.

Display any permit number exactly where that permit's conditions require it.

Keep your advertising and terms consistent with the Australian Consumer Law's ban on misleading conduct, regardless of which state's permit rules apply.

How this compares to what you may already know

If you have looked into US, UK, or Canadian giveaway law already, Australia's fragmentation is the standout difference. The US applies a federal test layered with occasional state-specific registration rules, similar in spirit to Australia's structure but organized around a different threshold logic, as covered in the earlier look at whether TikTok giveaways are legal. Canada's Criminal Code applies uniformly nationwide with its own distinct fix, the skill-testing question, rather than a permit system tied to prize value. Australia's trade promotion structure does not map cleanly onto either of those, which is exactly why treating it as its own system, rather than assuming a rule you learned elsewhere will transfer, matters here.

It is also worth being precise about the type of promotion you are actually running before assuming these rules apply at all. A skill-based contest, a genuine raffle for a registered charity, and a trade promotion lottery are three different legal categories with different rules attached, and the distinctions covered in giveaways, contests, and sweepstakes explained are worth confirming before you assume the permit thresholds in this guide apply to your specific format.

The bottom line

There is no single answer to whether an Australian giveaway needs a permit, because the honest answer depends on where your entrants live and how much your prize pool is worth. Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, and Tasmania let a properly free giveaway run without one. New South Wales, South Australia, the ACT, and the Northern Territory each set their own threshold and their own regulator, and crossing that threshold without the matching permit turns an ordinary TikTok giveaway into an unlicensed lottery. Work out your prize value, work out where your entrants realistically come from, and check the current rule for each state in that mix before you post. That single habit is what separates a giveaway that runs smoothly from one that ends with a regulator's letter instead of a happy winner.