SHORT ANSWER
Most dog breeds are allowed to enter Australia — but a small list of breeds are banned outright, and it has nothing to do with Australia's biosecurity rules. Under the Customs (Prohibited Imports) Regulations 1956, five purebred "dangerous dog" breeds and several wolf-hybrid breeds cannot be imported into Australia under any circumstances, regardless of vaccinations, permits, or quarantine compliance. If your dog is a mixed breed that doesn't match these banned breeds or their known crossbreed lines, they can typically still qualify for import — provided they meet all of the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) biosecurity requirements covered elsewhere in our Australia pet travel guides.
If you've been researching how to move your dog to Australia, you've probably run into a wall of biosecurity terminology — rabies titre tests, import permits, quarantine bookings. Breed restrictions are a different beast entirely, and it trips up a lot of pet owners because it isn't a health or disease-control issue at all.
According to DAFF's own guidance for pet owners, dog breed bans "relate to environmental protection and customs laws. They are not biosecurity laws." That means even if your dog passes every blood test, vaccination, and parasite treatment required for entry, a prohibited breed will still be turned away — or worse, seized and investigated — at the border.
Two separate government bodies enforce this:
If DAFF suspects an imported dog may be a banned breed after it lands, the matter is referred to the relevant agency for investigation — it isn't something a biosecurity import permit or the Mickleham quarantine process can resolve.
Per DAFF's official step-by-step import guides, the following purebred dogs are prohibited from import into Australia:
These same five breeds appear on the Australian Border Force's list of "dangerous breeds of dogs" prohibited from import under customs law, so the restriction is consistent no matter which government resource you check.
Separately, DAFF and DCCEEW prohibit the import of several wolf-hybrid breeds — dogs bred from domestic dogs and wild canids such as wolves. DAFF states this list is not exhaustive, and includes "any crossbreed offspring" of the following:
If you own a wolf-hybrid breed that isn't on this exact list, don't assume you're automatically cleared — DAFF explicitly recommends contacting DCCEEW directly at exotic.species@dcceew.gov.au for a case-by-case assessment before you invest time or money into the import process.
This is where most of the anxiety in pet owner forums comes from, and it's worth addressing directly: DAFF's guidance states that mixed-breed dogs are allowed into Australia if they meet all other import conditions. A dog that is part Pit Bull Terrier, for example, is not automatically banned in the same way a purebred American Pit Bull Terrier is.
However, that doesn't mean it's a guaranteed green light. DAFF's own wording is important here: "If an imported dog is identified as possibly being a prohibited breed after arrival in Australia, the Australian Border Force may investigate further." In practice, this means:
This uncertainty shows up constantly in real-world pet relocation discussions. In a widely discussed r/AusVisa thread about immigrating with a mixed Pit Bull-type dog, the community consensus was that while the technical rule only bans purebred American Pit Bull Terriers, mixed "bully" or pit-type dogs are frequently refused transport by airlines and pet transport agents well before they ever reach an Australian biosecurity officer, and that documentation labeling a dog as "mixed breed" doesn't guarantee smooth entry if the dog's phenotype resembles a banned breed. Several commenters pointed out that formal DNA testing and clear veterinary breed documentation obtained well in advance gave owners a much stronger case than verbal assurances alone.
"The breed ban catches people off guard because it feels like a biosecurity rule, but it's actually a customs and environmental protection issue enforced by a completely different part of government. We always tell clients: if there's any ambiguity about your dog's breed, get a written assessment from DAFF or DCCEEW before you spend a single dollar on vaccinations, titre testing, or booking a flight. It's the one part of this process where a permit genuinely cannot save you." — Adam Melton, Starwood Pet Travel
It's easy to conflate the import ban with Australia's state-level restricted breed ownership laws, but they're not the same thing. Once a dog is already living in Australia — whether it was born there or successfully imported as a mixed breed — individual states and territories have their own restricted breed declarations that regulate how certain dogs must be housed, muzzled, and registered. Victoria, for instance, classifies the American Pit Bull Terrier, Dogo Argentino, Fila Brasileiro, Japanese Tosa, and Perro de Presa Canario as "restricted breed dogs" under state law, with specific containment and identification requirements for owners.
In other words: the federal import ban decides whether your dog can enter the country at all, while state restricted-breed rules decide how a legally-owned dog of a similar (but not banned) type must be managed once it's here. If you're relocating with a dog that has any bully-type or fighting-breed ancestry, it's worth checking both layers — DAFF's import rules and your destination state's restricted breed register — before you commit to a moving date.