Tuesday, 12 May 2026

 David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (17:37): (2497) My adjournment matter is directed to the Minister for Mental Health. Lawyers who act on behalf of people with mental illness at the Mental Health Tribunal are critical in safeguarding their clients’ rights, ensuring they are involved and maintaining procedural fairness in decisions around compulsory treatment. However, under the current system, legal representatives face significant delays in accessing their clients’ clinical reports and records. This means they have insufficient time to brief their clients prior to their appearance at the tribunal, undermining both the fairness and the efficiency of the tribunal process.

The introduction of the electronic health information system, EHIS, via the Mental Health Legislation Amendment Bill 2025 was intended to enable real-time, integrated access to mental health information, to strengthen oversight and to afford consumers greater control over their information. These goals would have been enhanced if legal representatives were more easily able to access their clients’ EHIS records where informed consent was provided.

Currently, legal representatives need to request documents from individual treating teams, often under tight timeframes and with no guarantee of a response. This issue increases administrative burdens on clinicians. It can lead to situations where consumers and their lawyers are forced to proceed without having seen the documents that the decision-makers rely upon. In some cases, hearings are delayed or adjourned, leaving vulnerable clients in limbo.

It would be a very simple fix to authorise EHIS access for legal representatives. This would ensure the fair and timely exchange of information, enabling lawyers to better represent, advise and advocate for their clients and support their rights. Further, it would advance a consumer and human rights centred mental health system, as exemplified in the Mental Health Legal Rights Service model co-designed by Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, Victorian Legal Aid and the mental health legal service. It would also align with the Yoorrook for Transformation recommendation to strengthen First Peoples–led legal support. It ticks a lot of boxes, Minister.

The action I seek is for the minister to implement this simple reform to streamline the mental health system in order to provide better and fairer outcomes for consumers.