Across 2025 and 2026 the Queensland Civil and Adminsitrative Tribunal (QCAT) Act was placed under its regular 5-yearly review. As our Human Rights service supports many Queenslanders with their Guardianship and Adminsitration orders, the lived experiences of our clients, and our own experience dealing with QCAT meant we had a number of recommendations on how this system could be improved for people with disability.
Our recommendations were:
- Introduce a right to free legal representation for adults who are subject to guardianship and administration matters before QCAT. We recommend that QCAT follow the Mental Health Review Tribunal’s model of appointing legal representation in certain matters, with the ability for the adult to ‘opt out’ of having legal representation.
- Adequately resource independent disability advocates to work with the adult to identify and build supports in their networks to maximise and embed enhanced capacity and to deliver a supported decision-making framework for adults subject to a guardianship and/or administration application.
- Introduce a ‘paramount consideration’ being the rights of the adult in all guardianship and administration proceedings.
- The adult subject to a guardianship and/or administration application, or the review of an appointment, should have the opportunity to choose how they will appear at the QCAT hearing – in-person, by telephone or by video conference.
- Create opportunities for people with disability to fully participate in the QCAT proceedings, as per DRC Recommendation 6.11. QCAT should include the steps it is taking to maximise the participation of people with disability in proceedings in its annual report.
- As per Article 12 (2) of the UNCRPD and DRC recommendation 6.9, ensure that guardianship and administration orders are only made as a last resort and in a way that is the least restrictive of a person’s rights, autonomy and actions. This can be done by:
a) Legislating that an interim guardianship or administration order should only be able to be made where there is clear, cogent and current evidence of an immediate risk of harm. “On the papers” interim orders are incompatible with human rights and should not be allowed. The adult must be allowed to participate in a hearing before any order is made.
b) Introducing guidance on who can complete a health professional report. The report must have been written for the purposes of the guardianship and administration proceedings and must answer specific questions about the adult’s capacity as defined in the Guardianship and Administration Act 2000 (Qld).
c) Restricting who can be an applicant in guardianship and administration proceedings and introducing a requirement to disclose any financial interest that the applicant may have in the adult, for example, where a disability service provider makes an application for a participant who uses their services.
d) Receiving evidence from the adult themselves with appropriate support to maximise their participation.
- Introduce a requirement that sworn evidence of the notification of the subject adult, and confirmation of their views regarding the relevant application, is filed with the application.
- The Registrar must ensure that when hearing notices are sent, only parties who are relevant to the current application are notified and irrelevant parties from previous matters are not.
- Representatives should have access to information and evidence before QCAT, regardless of whether there is an existing confidentiality order in place.
- Establish panels of specialist members, as per recommendations 4.12 to 4.14 of the QHRC’s Building Belonging report, which should apply to all of the QCAT Human Rights Division.
- Create a specialist registry within QCAT that deals with guardianship and administration matters. Adequately resource this registry to respond to enquiries in a way that is accessible, fair, just, economical, informal and quick.
- Implement the recommendations made by the Office of the Public Advocate in the “Proceedings from a Roundtable on Litigation Guardianship”.
- Record and publish data on the number of matters that included legal and non-legal representation, and the number of in-person, remote and on-papers hearings.
Read our submission here: