RVAHJ Information Aide
AHPRA Certifications 2019
Introduction and Purpose
The AHPRA team have been advised that they
should accept certification wording which is
"substantially the same" as in their guidelines.
This should reduce any returns of forms.
AHPRA is the Australia Health Practioner Regulation Agency - the body responsible for
regulating the health professions across Australia. As a JP, you will be called upon to certify
true copies of documents which go to them.
Some certified copies were
being returned by AHPRA
because they did not meet
the wording required by the
AHPRA guidelines. Research
by the Association revealed that the wording used in the AHPRA guidelines was modeled on
the NSW certification approach and was not consistent with the new Victorian legislation.
After an approach to AHPRA (by our President), AHPRA agreed to accept the Victorian
wording “Certified to be a true copy of the original seen by me.” Pictures should be endorsed
with “ I certify that the photograph is a true likeness of the individual presenting the document
for certification.”
The AHPRA teams in each
State are responsible for the
acceptance or rejection of
Certified Copies. A form
certified in Victoria could be
reviewed by AHPRA in another
State and they may not have
complete visibility and
experience with our Victorian legislation. AHPRA teams across the nation have been advised
that they should accept certification wording which is "substantially the same" as in their
guidelines. We expect that this will alleviate most of the problems and significantly reduce the
number of documents returned for re-certification.
If you do get a document returned from AHPRA and can’t understand why it was rejected,
please record the name of the applicant and let us know by email to
that we can follow up and work through the problems. Our goal is to respect your time and
effort and minimise any need for redoing the certification and also to improve the level of
service that we all bring to the community.
Addressing this challenge
RVAHJ Information Aide: AHPRA Certifications (page 2)
Page 2 of 2
Royal Victorian Association of Honorary Justices
Here are the AHPRA Instructions for Authorised Officers from their Certification Guidelines as
at 20 October, 2019:
We hope this Information Aide is useful and helps our JP and BJ team. If you have any
questions, concerns or suggestions, please feel free to email
[email protected] and we will
do our best to respond quickly.
You can watch a short video about certifying documents for AHPRA on the
Association’s Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/AyDZDfcaOWk or under training on
our web site www.rvahj.org.au
AHPRA Certification Guidelines
In Victoria, please use the prescribed wording
set out in Schedule 5 of the Oaths and
Affirmations Regulations 2018:
“Certified to be a true copy of the original
seen by me.”
For photographs of a person for identification,
you can add:
“the photograph is a true likeness of the
person presenting the document.”
