If you’re holding back from applying because you’re worried something disqualifies you, start here: the list of genuine hard stops is much shorter than candidate anxiety makes it. Most of what people fear — glasses, an old knee, childhood asthma, a tattoo, a minor record from years ago — is assessed case-by-case, and a lot of it isn’t disqualifying at all. The thing that does reliably end applications is dishonesty. This is the honest breakdown.
A note on sourcing first. Eligibility, medical and background standards vary by service and change between intakes, so treat your own candidate communications as the source of truth — we update these guides when the services update theirs.
The genuine hard stops
There are really only two categories of true disqualifier. The first is the eligibility gate: you generally need Australian or New Zealand citizenship or permanent residency, to meet a minimum age, and to hold a valid driver licence. These are checked up front and there’s no arguing them — they’re requirements, not assessments. The FRNSW recruitment process guide and the FRNSW service page lay out a representative eligibility list, and the NSW page gives the state context.
The second is integrity. Dishonesty in your application — overstating, omitting, or actively misrepresenting something — is treated as disqualifying in itself, separately from whatever you were hiding. This is a frequent, and entirely avoidable, own-goal.
What’s actually case-by-case
Almost everything else is an assessment, not a gate:
- Vision and colour vision — assessed against the job’s safety needs; corrected vision is often acceptable within limits.
- Hearing, lung function, cardiac health — screened at the medical; many findings are manageable or correctable.
- Old injuries — assessed for current function, not for whether they ever happened.
- A minor or old criminal matter — weighed case-by-case on nature, severity and age.
- Tattoos — usually fine within common-sense content limits.
What each of these screens for, and how to prepare without panicking, is in the FRNSW medical assessment guide. The recurring theme: don’t self-reject on a rumour, and don’t crash-prepare for a medical you could have walked into in better shape.
Why honesty is the whole game
Here’s the pattern across every service: the background and medical stages rarely fail people for the thing itself — they fail people for the mismatch between what was declared and what the check returns. Declare accurately from the start. A correctly disclosed minor matter is usually a non-event; the same matter discovered after you denied it is fatal to the application. Honesty isn’t just ethical here — it’s the strategically correct move.
Where this fits
Most disqualification fear is really uncertainty, and uncertainty is fixable with information. The free 15-minute readiness check helps you see where you genuinely stand across the process so you can stop worrying about the wrong things and prepare for the real ones — and the coach flags what’s worth getting assessed early rather than discovering late. If you meet the eligibility gate and you’re honest, you almost certainly belong in the pool.