When you provide a person or organisation representative with an authority to act you are giving them permission to complete certain tasks on your behalf, such as completing and submitting applications, and making declarations and payments.
You can authorise any person or organisation representative you trust to act on your behalf. This includes an import agent or a registered automotive workshop.
Conversely, if you want to act on behalf of an organisation or individual as their representative, you will need to request the authority to act on their behalf from them.
Under the Road Vehicle Standards (RVS) legislation, all applications and approvals are managed through ROVER, the department’s online portal. This includes providing or requesting an authority to act.
Authority to act levels
ROVER’s authority to act feature allows multiple tiers of authority.
This authority to act feature gives organisations the control and flexibility to set standard or limited access levels and to assign functions.
When requesting someone to act on your behalf, you can:
- Set their level of access
- Set the functions they can do, such as create, view, update or submit applications
- Set the timeframe for the authority (by default it is set to 2 years but you can shorten or increase this timeframe).
ROVER guide: Authority to act describes what an authority to act is and how it works in more detail.
Providing or requesting an authority to act in ROVER
To allocate an authority to act you need to provide an email address for the individual receiving it so ROVER can email them an invitation to act on your behalf.
Alternatively, an individual can request to act on your behalf via ROVER. In this case, they will need an email address for you.
In order to receive or accept a request, the recipient will need to have a ROVER account. If they don’t have a ROVER account, they will need to create one.
They will not need their identity checked in order to accept the request. However, before a person can submit an application on your behalf through ROVER, you will need to have provided 100 points of identification via ROVER and checked by the department.
When do I need a letter giving me authority to act?
The first time you create an account for an organisation in ROVER, you’ll have to upload a letter from the organisation giving you an authority to act on its behalf.
Company certificate of registration or incorporation (or equivalent)
When you record an authority to act for an organisation in ROVER, you’ll need to upload a certificate of registration or incorporation (or equivalent) if the organisation does not have an Australian Business Number (ABN) or Australian Company Number (ACN).
This applies to many overseas companies.
Your certificate must be:
- issued to the organisation by a foreign government (recognised by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade*)
- an original or electronic copy of the certificate and include:
- the issuing jurisdiction
- the name of the organisation as entered on ROVER, and
- an identification reference number/alphanumeric
- in English, i.e. has enough English to identify all of the above, or is accompanied by a professional translation (an example is the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI)) if the letter is in a language other than English
- able to be accessed on request from the issuing jurisdiction.
* The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade publishes a list of recognised foreign governments on its website