On October 5, 2022, the Tasmanian Government began the Public Consultation period on a set of reforms to its Guardianship and Administration Act. The proposed changes include a greater recognition of the preferences of persons whose capacity is in question, as well as a higher threshold for declaring emergency guardianship orders.  

The Government had initially planned to open Public Consultation in November, but some public allegations of elder abuse in aged care facilities may have caused them to accelerate their timeline. 

On October 3, 2022, ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) News published an article detailing a Tasmanian man’s allegedly nightmarish experience under a guardianship order. 

The man claims that he was transferred from an aged care home to a secure dementia unit after undergoing a psychological assessment. He apparently never saw the results of this assessment. 

While in the dementia unit, the man claims staff overmedicated him, verbally abused him and left his door unlocked, which led to other patients entering his room every night. The facility was filthy, smelly and altogether terrifying. The man discovered that his Driver’s License had been cancelled, his car had been impounded, and that he had no permission to leave the home. The Tasmanian Civil and Administrative Tribunal placed the man under emergency guardianship orders after the facility successfully argued he had lost the capacity to make his own decisions.

The man has since transferred to a new home, where he enjoys much more freedom, but the trauma of his experience in the dementia unit still lingers with him. 

Advocacy Tasmania chief executive Leanne Groombridge decried the man’s treatment, contending that the aged care home’s lack of transparency and ability to compel an emergency guardianship order was highly problematic. She refused to believe this was an isolated incident, claiming the state’s Guardianship and Administration Act was “broken from top to bottom”.

Some of the Government’s proposed changes, including mandatory hearings for emergency guardianship orders, could save individuals from similarly inappropriate treatment if approved.

Thank you for reading, and have a nice day!

Sources:

Adam Langenberg, “Man placed under guardianship order after wife’s death says his rights were ‘completely taken away’”, ABC News (3 October 2022), online.

Elise Archer, Attorney General, “Public Consultation on Guardianship and Administration Amendment Bill 2022”, Tasmanian Government (5 October 2022), online.