Dealer Advertising Rules for Car Photos: What QLD, NSW and VIC Require

If you hold a motor dealer licence in Queensland, New South Wales or Victoria, no state licensing law stops you from editing your listing photos. What every state prohibits, in slightly different words, is a photo that misrepresents the car. On top of that, each state prescribes things your ads must contain, like your licence number or the vehicle's rego, and getting those wrong is the fastest way to attract a fine that has nothing to do with photography. This article sets out both layers, state by state, so a dealer principal can check their listings in ten minutes.

One thing before we start. This is general information written for working dealers, not legal advice. The rules below are current at the time of writing, and the state regulators update their guidance. When it matters, confirm with your state body or your solicitor.

The two layers of law on every listing

Every car ad you publish in Australia sits under two sets of rules at once.

The first layer is your state licensing regime. In Queensland that is the Motor Dealers and Chattel Auctioneers Act 2014, administered by the Office of Fair Trading. In New South Wales it is the Motor Dealers and Repairers Act 2013, administered by NSW Fair Trading. In Victoria it is the Motor Car Traders Act 1986 and its regulations, administered by Consumer Affairs Victoria. These laws licence you, and they attach conditions to how a licensee advertises.

The second layer is the Australian Consumer Law, which applies nationally and to everyone, licensed or not. Section 18 prohibits conduct that is misleading or deceptive or likely to mislead or deceive. Section 29 prohibits false representations that goods are of a particular standard, quality, value or condition. A listing photo is a representation. If the photo shows a straighter, cleaner car than the one on your lot, both sections are in play, and the ACL does not care whether the misrepresentation came from a paint brush, a lighting trick or an AI editor.

The practical consequence: your state rules mostly govern what must appear in the ad, and the ACL mostly governs what the photos are allowed to say about the car.

New South Wales: the only state that mentions pictures directly

NSW is the most specific of the three about advertising content. Under the NSW rules, a dealer's ad must include the licensee's name as it appears on the licence and a telephone number. If you advertise a used vehicle with a price, the ad must show the vehicle's registration number, or its stock number if it is unregistered.

On pricing, NSW draws a hard line between the purchase price and everything on top. Ads must make clear when dealer charges or statutory charges apply in addition to the advertised price, and NSW Fair Trading warns dealers off vague phrases that bury those costs.

Two NSW rules matter most for photography. First, the guidance states plainly that statements and pictures in advertisements must not mislead consumers as to the type or quality of the vehicle being offered. That is the clearest statement in any Australian licensing guidance that your photos themselves are regulated content. Second, where a vehicle has had damage repaired and disclosure is required, that disclosure must be in writing and in a size that is clearly legible. A photo edit that hides evidence of repaired damage pulls directly against that obligation.

The full guidance is on the NSW Government motor dealer advertising page, and it is short enough to read in one sitting.

Victoria: LMCT number, cash price, exact words

Victoria's requirements are older and more mechanical, which makes them easy to comply with and easy to breach through sloppiness. Under regulation 19 of the Motor Car Traders Regulations, every advertisement by a licensed trader must include the letters LMCT followed by your licence number, printed clearly and legibly. Ads for used cars must state the cash price followed by the statement "not including stamp duty and transfer fees". The ad must also identify the vehicle, by registration number if it is registered, otherwise by an identifier such as the VIN.

Consumer Affairs Victoria publishes a self assessment checklist for motor car traders that covers advertising alongside the rest of your obligations. It is worth running your current Carsales template against it once a year.

Victoria's regulations say nothing about photographs specifically. That silence is not permission. It just means the photo question in Victoria is answered entirely by the ACL, and the ACL's answer is the same everywhere: the photo must not misrepresent the car.

Queensland: licensed conduct plus the ACL

Queensland's Motor Dealers and Chattel Auctioneers Act 2014 is the youngest of the three regimes. Its advertising touchpoints are less itemised than NSW or Victoria, and the Office of Fair Trading's focus in practice is on false or misleading representations about a vehicle: its condition, its history, its odometer and what the buyer is actually getting. Queensland also runs a statutory warranty scheme with different classes of cover depending on the vehicle's age and kilometres, and how you describe a car in an ad feeds into what a buyer can later hold you to.

For Queensland dealers the working rule is simple. Meet your general obligations under the Act, keep your representations provably true, and treat your listing photos exactly as the NSW guidance treats them, because the ACL applies in Queensland with the same force. The Queensland motor industry regulation pages collect the current requirements.

What all of this means for photo editing

Put the three states together and a clear editing standard falls out, and it is the one we have argued for since this site started.

Editing that changes the presentation of the photo is fine everywhere. Replacing a cluttered yard background with a clean one, correcting exposure and white balance, blurring the number plate. None of that makes a representation about the car's condition. The car in the frame is the same car.

Editing that changes the apparent condition of the car is the risk, in every state. Removing a dent, painting out a scratch, filling a stone chip, brightening faded paint until it reads as new. In NSW that walks into the express rule that pictures must not mislead as to quality. Everywhere, it walks into sections 18 and 29 of the ACL, and it does so in the most provable way imaginable, because the buyer is standing next to the car holding the listing on their phone. We covered where the ethical and legal line sits in more detail in Car Photo Editing That Keeps the Dents, and the disclosure side in Do You Have to Disclose AI Edited Car Photos in Australia?

This is also why it matters which tool your yard uses. Cardabra's image processing is built around condition preservation: the algorithm rebuilds the background and lighting around the vehicle while keeping every dent, scratch and stone chip exactly as photographed. The processing behind that is genuinely sophisticated, but using it is one upload per car, which is what makes it workable across a whole yard's inventory. Pricing is in Australian dollars, with credit packs for one off sales and monthly plans sized for dealer inventories.

A ten minute check for dealer principals

Pull up your three most recent listings and check them against this list.

Your licence identifier appears where your state requires it: LMCT number in Victoria, licensee name and phone number in NSW. The rego or stock number is present where a price is shown. The price statement uses your state's required wording, including Victoria's exact stamp duty and transfer fees line. Any repaired damage disclosure is in writing and legible, not buried. Every photo shows the car as it currently is, including its flaws. If your ad process is run by staff or an agency, this check is worth doing quarterly, because templates drift.

If your photo workflow needs tightening while you are at it, our used car photo workflow for independent dealers covers the shooting side, and Can You Edit Car Photos for a Carsales Listing? covers the platform rules that sit alongside the law.

The dealers who get in trouble over advertising are almost never running elaborate deceptions. They are running old templates with a missing LMCT number, or they let an editing tool quietly improve the metal. Both are cheap to fix this week.