Accountability with privacy: confidentiality in the guardianship system

As such, the strict application of open justice and procedural fairness tends to limit the role of confidentiality in decision-making. On the other hand, the focus of the guardianship system is to safeguard the rights and interests, including the privacy, of adults with decision-making disabilities. Because guardianship matters involve highly personal issues that would normally be decided in private, some degree of confidentiality may be warranted.

Seeking views

The Queensland Law Reform Commission has released a Discussion Paper, Confidentiality in the Guardianship System: Public Justice, Private Lives, calling for submissions on this issue.

The commission is asking five main questions about the role of confidentiality in the guardianship system:

1. Under what circumstances, if any, should the tribunal be able to keep a person out of a hearing?
2. Under what circumstances, if any, should the tribunal be able to stop a person involved in the proceeding from seeing documents that the tribunal is considering?
3. Under what circumstances, if any, should the tribunal be able to refuse to give its decision or reasons for that decision to a person involved in the proceeding?
4. To what extent, if at all, should tribunal proceedings be able to be openly discussed by people outside those proceedings?
5. Apart from the situations referred to in questions 1-4 (which deal with tribunal proceedings), are there other circumstances in which information that is revealed within the guardianship system should be required to be kept confidential?

Details about how to make a submission are available on the commission’s website.

Useful links

The commission’s Discussion Paper, accompanying publications, and all information about the commission’s guardianship review are available from the commission’s website.

The issue of confidentiality in the guardianship system was recently the subject of a 30-minute story on the ABC’s Radio National program, The Law Report (August 15, 2006). You can listen to or download the transcript of this program from The Law Report webpage.

Information about the Guardianship and Administration Tribunal, and other agencies involved in the guardianship system, is available on the Queensland Government’s Department of Justice website.

Information about the commission is available on the commission’s website.