Primary source: https://www.police.act.gov.au/road-safety/safe-driving/seatbelts
ACT Policing’s seatbelt page sets out the Territory’s child-restraint requirements in the same national pattern. Restraints and seatbelts must be properly fastened and adjusted. Babies under six months must use an approved rear-facing restraint. From six months to four years the restraint may be forward or rear facing. From four to seven the child uses an approved forward-facing restraint or an approved booster, and must not sit in the front row of a multi-row vehicle unless all other seats are occupied by passengers under seven. From seven the child may use a suitable child restraint or a normal passenger seat with a seatbelt. A passenger under four must not be in the front row of a multi-row vehicle.
The page adds two sentences that belong on every family fridge. A child can never be put into a seatbelt with another adult or child. It is the driver’s legal responsibility to restrain children correctly even on short or low-speed trips.
ACT Policing points readers to the Roads and Transport Authority for current law. If you are booking a fitter, use Kidsafe ACT and the CREP directory. The Territory is small; the Standard is not a local remix.
## After you read the local page
Come back to the national explainers if you need the “why”, not only the “what”. Ages and stages explains the shared bands. AS/NZS 1754 explains the mark. Travel and taxis collects hire-car and taxi differences so you do not mix NSW wording with Tasmanian wording.
If you are moving interstate with the same seat, the seat does not need a new mark — the Standard is national — but the taxi and penalty conversations do need a new tab.
This page is general information for Australian readers. It is not safety advice, a product ranking, or a fitting service. Always read the restraint label and the manufacturer instructions, confirm the current rule with the road agency in the state or territory where you are driving, and have the finished install checked by an authorised fitter.
Live source: ACT Policing / Roads ACT.
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Short trips are still trips
The ACT page’s insistence on short and low-speed trips is the right sentence for a city of short drives. A school-gate loop is a trip. A parliamentary-zone car park shuffle is a trip. Sharing a belt is never a trip.
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How this state page should be used on a Tuesday
Print or bookmark the live agency link at the bottom of the page. If you are standing beside a car, you want the agency wording, not our paraphrase. Use this explainer to understand how the local page sits on the national model: the same four age doors, the same front-row caution in multi-row vehicles, and the same insistence on an AS/NZS 1754 mark.
Then do the physical checks this site repeats everywhere. Look at the shoulder markers. Look at the tether. Look at whether the seating position is a lap-sash position if you are using a booster. If you are about to cross a border later in the week, open the next state’s page before you treat a taxi exemption as portable.
If a family member forwards a social-media graphic that “summarises the law”, compare it with the agency page. Graphics drop exemptions, taxi notes and the stay-in-stage sentence. This page exists to put those pieces back.
For fittings, use Kidsafe and the CREP station finder rather than a random workshop. For recalls, use the ACCC. For consumer tests, use CREP after — not before — the Standard mark. That order does not change because you changed postcode.
Finally, remember the dual disclaimer. This is general information. A fitter who can see your child and your car outranks a carefully written map.