Australian Vaccination Network

The Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network, formerly known as the Australian Vaccination Network (AVN), is an Australian anti-vaccination pressure group registered in New South Wales. As Australia's most controversial anti-vaccination organisation, it has lobbied against a variety of vaccination-related programs, downplayed the danger of childhood diseases such as measles and pertussis, championed the cause of alleged vaccination victims, and promoted the use of ineffective alternatives such as homeopathy and chiropractic.

The vast majority of doctors agree that opposition to vaccination applies to a fringe medical science viewpoint. The group has been described as a provider of "misleading, inaccurate, and deceptive" vaccination information by the New South Wales Health Care Complaints Commission (HCCC), and has been heavily criticised by doctors and other experts on immunisation. The group has been called the "stronghold of the anti-vaccination movement" in Australia and is subject to widespread criticism from medical professionals, scientists and other proponents of vaccination. It has also been criticised for harassing the parents of a victim of vaccine-preventable disease, and for promoting the false idea that shaken baby syndrome is actually vaccine injury.

On 14 October 2010, the organisation's right to raise funds was stripped from it by the New South Wales Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing, stating that its appeals had "not been conducted in good faith for charitable purposes". In December 2012, the New South Wales Office of Fair Trading issued an order for the group to change its name within two months or be de-registered. The department described the group's name as being "misleading and a detriment to the community". The group changed its name in February 2014.

The Australian Vaccination-Skeptics Network was formed in 1994 as the Vaccination Awareness Network by Meryl Dorey, a medically unqualified American who moved to Australia with her Australian husband, saying she got involved after her eldest son was allegedly adversely affected by DPT and MMR vaccines administered when he was a child. The group applied for tax-deductible charity status through the Australian Taxation Office and finally obtained it in 2002; it lost that status in 2007 by allowing it to lapse, and obtained it again in 2009. In 2010 the group's tax-exempt status was revoked by the NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing after an audit of the organisation finding that AVN fundraising appeals had not been conducted in good faith for charitable purposes, had been improperly administered and were not in the public interest.