Page 1375 - Week 04 - Wednesday, 28 March 2012
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The bill does have human rights implications. These implications were raised during the consultation process and we recognise the challenge of balancing the need to respect vulnerable people’s right to privacy while ensuring that they are protected from harm. To address this we have built into the legislation a notification and consent process to ensure that rights are protected.
If an official visitor is to visit a site that is not an institution, such as a disability group home, a mental health step-up, step-down facility or emergency accommodation for people experiencing homelessness, the official visitor must provide the owner or operator with at least 24 hours notification. The owner or operator may not stop a visit occurring but an entitled person—the person with the disability, the mental illness or who is homeless—does retain the right to refuse entry to the official visitor to what they consider to be their personal space, and the official visitor must respect that.
We note that existing official visitors do have the right of entry without notification for government-run institutions. One place where we have expanded this power to the community setting is when official visitors for disability are concerned that a person is at risk. We want the official visitor for disability to have the ability to act and visit without notification if that is required.
In such a situation the official visitor for disability would not have to give the owner or operator of a facility 24 hours notice. However, the entitled person—that is, the one who is at risk—retains the right to refuse the official visitor entry if they do not want them to visit.
The Human Rights Act also protects equality before the law and protects against discrimination on any ground. The premise of the concern in this case is that it is because of their disability that the people will fall within the visitor inspection scheme and that because of this they are having their rights limited discriminatorily by virtue of their disability.
Whilst it is true that legal requirements are being created and applied to people in particular circumstances because of their disability, it should be noted that in doing so a range of other human rights are being protected. An analogy may be made to measures provided for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to address historic disadvantage and to respond to their particular cultural needs.
Similarly, in this instance the protections being created for people with disability are necessary to protect other human rights and any minor limitation that is created has been limited to the greatest extent possible. The scheme is the least restrictive and reasonably available means to address the legitimate and recognised purpose of protecting their personal safety and other human rights.
The bill also proposes reforms regarding the manner in which disability accommodation is recognised as being a safe place of care. The bill establishes that the minister can provide for a set of disability standards, and for the Community Services Directorate to maintain a register of disability accommodation including long-term accommodation and respite accommodation that meet the necessary standards for safety and quality of care.
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