Page 3714 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 October 1991
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with the right appointments to that tribunal, we have the potential to ensure that that balance is struck and maintained; but I urge those who from time to time have cause to resort to this legislation to do so with great care.
It is also interesting to note the principles under which the legislation will be administered. Those principles are set out in clause 3. They make reference to a person needing assistance or protection from abuse, exploitation, or neglect - of course, that raises the very real prospect of children being covered by the provisions of the legislation - or a person being legally incompetent or unable to enter into particular transactions because of a physical, mental, psychological or intellectual condition.
The conditions are also set out in subclause (2), whereby certain powers might be exercised. The subclause refers generally to such things as ensuring that people are appropriately protected; that their views and wishes, so far as they can be ascertained, are being respected; that their lives are not being interfered with, except to the least extent necessary; and that they should be encouraged to look after themselves. Obviously, it will not always be possible to meet those provisions. It will not always be possible to ensure that a person's wishes, for example, are respected, particularly where a psychological condition is severe.
Naturally, therefore, the principles in subclause (2) of clause 3 cannot always be the touchstone of everything that a guardian or a manager might do under the legislation; but that, of course, is not the point of those principles. They are guidelines. They are sets of principles meant to offer an ideal path but in circumstances that cannot always, unfortunately, be respected.
I have noted, with interest, limits on the findings of disability that govern the operation of the legislation. They are contained in clause 5. I suppose this indicates that in this day and age we have a very different view of what constitutes an intellectual or psychological condition. Reference is made to a person not being taken to have a condition of that kind merely because the person is eccentric. I am sure many of us in this place will be relieved to see that.
It refers to whether a person does or does not express a particular political or religious opinion, is of a particular sexual orientation or expresses a particular sexual preference, or engages or has engaged in illegal or immoral conduct. That, of course, harks back to an age when particular forms of activity were frowned upon. Even particular opinions were considered to be so extreme as to warrant some control or restraint on a person's ability to act in conformity with those opinions or those preferences.
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