Janet Rice (Victoria, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. I'm sorry I missed that amongst all of the things going on here. I want to move onto schedule 9—restrictive practices—which is one of the biggest areas of concern that many advocacy groups have raised with me. The concerns with schedule 9 are about both the hierarchy of decision-makers in order to authorise restrictive practices and the immunity from prosecution. As we know, the issue of restrictive practices was a massive issue that was covered in the royal commission, the use of physical and chemical restraints, and the royal commission made some very strong recommendations about reducing the amount of restrictive practices. We also have the evidence that since the royal commission in fact the use of restrictive practices has not decreased, and the data is showing that there has continued to be an unacceptably high use of physical and chemical restraints.

I've certainly been having quite a lot of communication with the minister's office about schedule 9 and about who gets to decide whether restrictive practices are going to be put in place. As I understand it, there is going to be subordinate legislation that will be put in place that will outline that hierarchy of decision-makers and quality-of-care principles. My question is, first, we are discussing this legislation now, but those quality-of-care principles and the hierarchy of subordinate decision-makers are not yet public, so I want to know: when are you going to make public those quality-of-care principles and the hierarchy of subordinate decision-makers?