Mandatory Disease Testing

The NSW Ombudsman has a statutory role to monitor the operation and administration of the Mandatory Disease Testing Act 2021 (MDT Act), and to report on that monitoring. 

The MDT Act commenced in July 2022 – it provides for mandatory blood testing of a person whose bodily fluids have come into contact, as a result of that person’s deliberate action, with a worker from certain government agencies in NSW, including law enforcement, corrective services, health and emergency services.

Workers can apply for a Mandatory Testing Order through their workplace after consulting with a medical practitioner. A senior officer in the worker’s agency can make a Mandatory Testing Order, refuse the application or apply to the court for an order if the third party is a vulnerable third party.

Vulnerable third party means a person with a mental health or cognitive impairment, or a child between the ages of 14 to 18. Children under 14 cannot be subject of an application.

The Department of Communities and Justice has some further information and fact sheets about the scheme here, including which public sector workers can apply for an order.

• We receive statutory notifications from agencies about the decisions made on applications for orders, and when decisions are made by the Chief Health Officer, about applications for review.
• We can require information about applications and the operation of the scheme for the purpose of our reporting.
• We are required to prepare a report to NSW Parliament after 12 months of commencement of the MDT Act and every three years after the first report, including information about our monitoring of the scheme and the exercise of functions under the MDT Act.

In February 2025, we reported to Parliament on the first 18 months of our monitoring of the MDT Act.

The report, Mandatory disease testing in NSW: monitoring the operation and administration of the Mandatory Disease Testing Act 2021, sets out our observations from our monitoring, and contains 62 recommendations about the MDT Act and how it is being used. 

Our core recommendations are that the Government consider whether the MDT Act should be continued at all, and if it is to continue, that applications for Mandatory Testing Orders should be determined by the court.

We made a series of 60 further recommendations should our core recommendations not be adopted. These include amendments to the MDT Act and improvements to agency policies and practices, to address problems with decision-making and ineffective procedural fairness mechanisms, which we identified through our monitoring. 

The full report is here: Download the report.

A fact sheet on our first report, containing a brief overview of our observations, is here.

Notifications of determinations can be made to us by email at mdt@ombo.nsw.gov.au. These notifications must include the reasons for the determination. A senior officer should clearly record all factors considered when making a determination and include reference to all reports and advice used when giving us written notice of the determination.

This is consistent with the recommendations made by the Chief Health Officer in their guidelines. Copies of all documents relevant to the determination should be attached to the email.

We may require further information about applications at the time of receiving notifications, such as the outcome of determinations made to apply to the court for a Mandatory Testing Order.

We may require information from agencies about applications and orders made for the purposes of our reporting on our monitoring. This may include information about applications which were resolved by consensual testing of persons (and not notified to us previously), agency training and policy documents relevant to the operation and administration of the MDT Act, demographic information about the persons subject to applications, or other documentation about applications.

If you would like to enquire further about the Mandatory Disease Testing Scheme or would like to provide us with information about your experience of the scheme you can email us at mdt@ombo.nsw.gov.au.