More than a decade after the passage of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act in 2003 it is undecided whether counselling will become a state-regulated profession. This article focuses on three possible directions potentially available to NZAC and its members: state-regulation, the current status quo as a self-managing organization, or a self-regulation approach with a measure of state approval. It argues that counsellors need to be pragmatic in deciding which to support, since government policy considerations will influence the success of any direction we choose to take.