Submission to the Disability Discrimination Act Review | External submission

Submission to the Disability Discrimination Act Review November 2025

Acknowledgement: VMIAC proudly acknowledge Aboriginal people as Australia’s First Peoples and the Traditional Owners and custodians of the land and water on which we live and work. We acknowledge Victoria’s First Nation’s communities and culture and pay respect to Aboriginal Elders past and present. We recognise that sovereignty was never ceded and the significant and negative consequences of colonisation and dispossession on Aboriginal communities.

Despite the far-reaching and long-lasting impacts of colonisation on First Nations communities, Aboriginal people remain resilient and continue to retain a strong connection to culture. We acknowledge the strong connection of First Nations Peoples to Country, culture and community, and the centrality of this to positive mental health and wellbeing.

About VMIAC

VMIAC is the peak body run by and for Victorian mental health consumers1. VMIAC’s vision is a world where all consumers stand proud, live a life with their choices honoured and their rights upheld, and where these principles are embedded in all aspects of society. VMIAC pursues this vision across all its work, including advocating for consumers across state and federal policy, supporting and leading consumer-led research projects, lived and living experience programs, as well as supporting consumers in peer-led in outreach and advocacy services. VMIAC’s State-wide programs provide individual and systemic advocacy to consumers with psychosocial disabilities, using a rights-based approach, to ensure their rights and freedoms are exercised.

Executive Summary

A modernised Disability Discrimination Act must deliver enforceable protections that reflect contemporary human rights standards and the lived reality of discrimination experienced by people with psychosocial disability and life-interrupting mental distress. The current Act is reactive, difficult to navigate, and poorly equipped to address systemic discrimination across health, policing, education, justice, housing, employment, and digital systems.

VMIAC recommends that a reformed DDA:

Embeds a human rights and social model of disability and explicitly recognises psychosocial disability.
Introduces a positive duty requiring organisations to prevent discrimination before it occurs.
Recognises compulsory treatment and restrictive practices as forms of disability-based discrimination.
Strengthens the Australian Human Rights Commission’s powers to investigate systemic issues and enforce compliance.
Ensures accessible, trauma-informed, culturally safe complaint pathways.
Removes exemptions that permit discrimination in health, mental health, and related services.
Extends protections to digital and algorithmic environments.
Aligns with a national Human Rights Act to ensure a coherent rights-affirming legislative framework.

These reforms would bring Australia into compliance with its obligations under the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and help ensure that rights are upheld in practice.

1 People with lived experience of mental health challenges, trauma, or emotional distress, who may have accessed mental health services or services with the purpose to support their mental and emotional wellbeing.

Introduction

VMIAC welcomes the opportunity to contribute to the review of the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) (DDA/the Act). This review offers an important opportunity to create a modern, robust piece of legislation that protects people with disability, including people with psychosocial disability, people with lived experience of life-interrupting distress, and mental health consumers. The current Act remains overly reactive and difficult for individuals to use, especially when discrimination arises in systems characterised by entrenched power imbalances.

As Victoria’s peak body for mental health consumers, this submission is grounded in lived experience leadership and informed by extensive evidence from the Victorian mental health reform process, including widespread documentation of coercive practices, discrimination, and systemic failures. Although we speak from a Victorian context, our recommendations apply nationally.

For the purposes of this submission, we will utilise a range of terms, including psychosocial disability, mental health consumers, and lived experience of life-interrupting mental distress. We recognise that many of those we represent do not identify with disability language yet still experience discrimination on this basis and require protection under the DDA. Our position is clear: protections must apply regardless of diagnosis, service use, or identification as disabled.

VMIAC also strongly supports a national Human Rights Act to sit alongside a reformed DDA. A Human Rights Act would provide a coherent and consistent rights framework, strengthen interpretation, and support the practical application of principles such as equality, dignity, liberty, and informed consent across all systems and services.

Part 1 – Updating Understandings of Disability and Disability Discrimination

Defining Disability

The current definition of disability within the DDA is outdated and inconsistent with contemporary human rights frameworks. Terms such as “disturbed” or “malfunction” are inappropriate and reinforce stigma. This language does not reflect current understandings of disability or the lived experience of people with psychosocial disability and life-interrupting mental distress.

VMIAC supports adopting a human rights and social model of disability, consistent with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The definition must move away from a deficit-based view of individuals and instead recognise the environmental, and attitudinal barriers that enable exclusion and disadvantage.

Under the current DDA, mental health consumers are inadequately recognised and protected. While “psychiatric disability” is included, the term “psychosocial disability” is not explicitly referenced, resulting in confusion and inconsistent application across services and jurisdictions. The World Health Organisation recognises psychosocial disability as a distinct category that requires specific consideration

in policy and law.1 Its inclusion within the DDA is essential to ensure equitable access to rights, supports, and protections.

Expanding the concept of discrimination:

Reform of the DDA should also expand the legal concept of discrimination to capture the full range of ways in which people with psychosocial disability experience harm and exclusion. The Act should explicitly recognise that:

Coercive and restrictive practices, including forced treatment, seclusion, and restraint, constitute discrimination that violates the rights to equality, liberty, and bodily integrity (CRPD Articles 12, 14 and 17).2
Systemic discrimination occurs where institutional design or service models exclude or disadvantage people with mental health–related disabilities.
Discrimination by association can extend to families, friends, and supporters of people with psychosocial disability, who often experience stigma or exclusion due to their connection with a person with lived experience.

The DDA should adopt inclusive and accessible language that reflects dignity and autonomy. Consideration should be given to renaming it the Disability and Health Status Discrimination Act or a similar title, ensuring protection extends to all people who experience discrimination based on actual or perceived mental health conditions, even if they do not identify as disabled.

Discrimination against people with psychosocial disability is rarely about the disability itself; it is most often rooted in stigma, fear, and structural exclusion. Psychosocial disability is also fluctuating and episodic, meaning that people may move in and out of periods where they experience limitations or require support. The DDA must explicitly recognise this reality, ensuring people are protected whether or not they are currently experiencing symptoms or impacts of their disability.

Legal protections and eligibility for adjustments should not depend on a person demonstrating continuous or visible impairment. Instead, they must reflect the variable and context-dependent nature of psychosocial disability, ensuring that rights and accommodations are available throughout the full spectrum of people’s lived experience, including periods of stability and recovery.

Determining Discrimination: From Comparator to Detriment

The current reliance on a comparator test to establish direct and indirect discrimination under the DDA presents particular challenges for people with psychosocial disability. It requires a person to show that they were treated less favourably than another person without disability in similar circumstances. This standard fails to account for the complex and context-specific ways in which discrimination occurs and can make genuine experiences of discrimination invisible.

The comparator test also struggles to capture intersectional discrimination, where the interaction of disability, gender, culture, or other characteristics cannot be meaningfully compared to a single “non-disabled” counterpart.

VMIAC supports a shift towards a detriment-based test, which focuses on whether a person has been treated unfavourably or has experienced detriment because of their disability. This approach is more

consistent with human rights principles, and it better reflects the lived realities of discrimination in mental health and related settings.

Intersectionality

People with psychosocial disability and life-interrupting distress are not a homogenous group. Many experience additional forms of discrimination linked to gender, culture, sexuality, ethnicity, or socio-economic disadvantage. Women, First Nations Australians, LGBTQIA+ individuals, culturally and linguistically diverse communities, and people living in poverty are disproportionately impacted by systemic barriers and violence within mental health and related systems.

The reformed DDA must embed intersectionality as a guiding principle for both interpretation and policy design. This means recognising that discrimination is often compounded by overlapping identities and circumstances, and that legal protections must respond to these intersecting forms of disadvantage. Embedding an intersectional approach would ensure that reforms are inclusive of diverse lived experiences and that people are not further marginalised within systems intended to uphold their rights.

Vilification Protections

Mental health consumers routinely experience public stigma, harmful stereotypes, and discriminatory commentary in media, community settings, and online spaces. These acts contribute to social exclusion and ongoing discrimination, yet the current DDA does not prohibit disability-based vilification. This leaves consumers particularly exposed to dehumanising narratives that portray them as dangerous, unpredictable, or incapable.

VMIAC supports the introduction of clear and enforceable protections against disability vilification. In line with existing human rights standards, the DDA should define vilification as public conduct that is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate, intimidate, or incite hatred, serious contempt, or severe ridicule toward a person because of disability. This definition should explicitly recognise the unique harms that arise from mental health–related vilification, including the way sensationalist reporting and negative stereotypes reinforce discrimination and limit participation in community life.

To establish national consistency and ensure appropriate safeguards, the DDA should include:

A standalone vilification provision that covers both emotional harm and incitement, consistent with protections in the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth).
An exemption framework that preserves fair comment, artistic expression, academic debate, and public-interest discussion.
Explicit recognition that vilification includes public narratives that perpetuate stigma, imply dangerousness, or portray mental health consumers as lesser or incapable.

Embedding vilification protections within the DDA would provide people with disability, including mental health consumers, equal access to the same legal safeguards already afforded in other areas of discrimination law, and would support safer, more inclusive public discourse across Australia.

Part 2 – Introducing a Positive Duty to Eliminate Discrimination

A rights-based anti-discrimination framework must do more than respond after harm has occurred. To be effective, it must require proactive measures that prevent discrimination before it happens. VMIAC strongly supports the introduction of a positive duty under the DDA, requiring all organisations and public authorities to take reasonable and proportionate steps to eliminate discrimination. This duty should apply across all sectors, including health, policing, education, justice, housing, and employment, and must not exclude government agencies or mental health services.

The duty should move beyond voluntary inclusion plans to embed clear, enforceable obligations and accountability mechanisms. Each duty holder should be required to implement and publicly report on a Disability Inclusion and Non-Discrimination Plan, co-designed with people with lived and living experience of disability.

Mental Health and Policing

People with psychosocial disability experience some of the most severe and persistent forms of discrimination in the mental health and policing systems. The positive duty must explicitly include these sectors, recognising their unique power to cause harm or uphold rights.

The duty should require:

Mental health services to implement proactive strategies for rights protection, supported decision-making, and the elimination of restrictive practices including seclusion, restraint, and forced treatment.
Police and emergency services to adopt rights-based and de-escalation-focused response protocols that prioritise safety and consent.
Public authorities, including health services and Victoria Police, to work collaboratively with lived experience organisations in designing and evaluating anti-discrimination measures.

Training in human rights, trauma-informed practice, and supported decision-making should be mandatory for all duty holders.

Enforcement and Oversight

Under the current DDA, enforcement is largely reactive and places the burden on individuals to report and prove discrimination. For many people with psychosocial disability, this process is daunting and disempowering. It requires individuals who may already be in distress to navigate legalistic and adversarial complaint systems, often without advocacy or support. As a result, many incidents of discrimination go unreported, leaving systemic issues unaddressed.

Reform of the DDA should shift responsibility from individuals to institutions, ensuring that organisations take active steps to comply with their obligations. Embedding a positive duty would make this possible by requiring duty holders to demonstrate what they are doing to prevent discrimination, rather than waiting for individuals to raise complaints after harm has occurred.

To make the duty effective, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) must have expanded powers and a broader role in oversight. In addition to investigating systemic breaches and monitoring compliance, the AHRC should be authorised to:

Conduct proactive audits and inquiries into discriminatory practices across sectors.
Issue enforceable improvement notices and publish findings where compliance is lacking.
Undertake administrative reviews in specific cases – for example, where a person has requested a workplace or education-related adjustment that was denied on the grounds of “unjustifiable hardship.” The AHRC should be able to assess whether the decision was reasonable, whether consultation occurred, and whether alternatives were explored.

This review function would provide a fair, accessible, and non-legal avenue for resolving disputes, ensuring that rights are enforceable in practice, not only in theory. Enforcement mechanisms must be co-designed with people with lived experience and grounded in trauma-informed practice. This would help build confidence in the system and ensure that the DDA’s protections are meaningful for those most affected by discrimination.

Together, these reforms would replace a reactive, burdensome model with one that is preventive and accountable, giving effect to Australia’s commitments under the CRPD and ensuring that the DDA serves as a living instrument for equality and justice.

Part 3 – Encouraging Inclusion in Employment, Education, and Public Life

The Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability (Disability Royal Commission) found that discrimination against people with disability is widespread and entrenched across all systems and services. For people with psychosocial disability, these experiences are often intensified by stigma, assumptions of incapacity, and the absence of reasonable adjustments in workplaces, education, housing, and healthcare. The Disability Royal Commission highlighted how exclusion in one area, such as education, frequently leads to exclusion in others, creating a cycle of disadvantage that denies people equal opportunity and full participation in community life.

Employment

Despite ongoing policy commitments to improve workforce participation, people with psychosocial disability continue to face extremely high unemployment rates and persistent workplace discrimination. The employment rate for people with psychosocial disability in Australia is only 29 per cent, compared to 53.4 per cent for people with other disabilities and 84.1 per cent for people without disability.3

Stigma and misunderstanding about mental health remain major barriers to fair employment. Many people are denied opportunities or face exclusion following disclosure of a mental health condition. Others are disadvantaged by rigid “fitness for work” or “fitness to practise” assessments that fail to consider recovery, support, and workplace adjustments.

The DDA should require employers to:

Provide clear and confidential processes for disclosure and support.
Offer flexible work arrangements and psychosocial adjustments such as modified hours, recovery leave, and hybrid work options.
Eliminate discriminatory or arbitrary fitness-for-work assessments.
Promote collaborative approaches through consultation with employees about reasonable adjustments and return-to-work supports.
Recognise lived experience and peer work as legitimate forms of professional expertise, ensuring equal pay, conditions, and career pathways.
Develop model policies for psychosocial adjustments across public sector bodies to guide best practice.
Fund mental health–specific employment programs that support workplace re-entry following illness or trauma.

Provisions on reasonable adjustment, unjustifiable hardship, and inherent requirements should be strengthened to clarify that employers must consider and implement accommodations wherever possible, and that the threshold for “unjustifiable hardship” should remain high.

Education

Discrimination also occurs in education, where students with psychosocial disability may be denied adjustments, placements, or fair assessment. The reformed DDA should ensure that educational institutions:

Provide reasonable adjustments for fluctuating attendance, recovery periods, and non-linear study pathways.
Include disability awareness and lived experience-informed education within teacher training and accreditation standards.
Protect students from exclusion based on diagnosis, perceived risk, or past treatment history.
Consult with students when designing individual support plans and assessment modifications.
Implement transparent complaints and review processes to ensure accountability for discriminatory decisions.

Education providers should also report publicly on measures taken to improve accessibility and inclusion for students with psychosocial disability.

Civic and Community Participation

Equal participation in civic and community life is fundamental to social inclusion, yet people with psychosocial disability are often excluded from decision-making spaces, volunteer opportunities, and public roles due to stigma or restrictive eligibility criteria.

The DDA should:

Protect the right of people with psychosocial disability to contribute to advisory bodies, committees, and policy development.
Require governments to resource lived experience representation within public decision-making structures as part of compliance with the positive duty.

Recognise volunteering, community leadership, and civic engagement as areas where discrimination can occur, ensuring that reasonable adjustments apply beyond paid employment.
Address barriers in housing, healthcare, recreation, and digital access, which continue to prevent people from fully participating in community life.

These reforms would align with the CRPD’s requirement that governments ensure equal participation in all aspects of public life and would help dismantle the structural barriers that continue to marginalise people with psychosocial disability.

Part 4 – Improving Access to Justice

People with psychosocial disability experience significant barriers when seeking justice or accountability for discrimination and rights breaches. Traditional legal processes are often inaccessible, retraumatising, and not designed for people experiencing psychological distress. Many face disbelief, procedural complexity, and lack of advocacy when attempting to make complaints, particularly against health or policing agencies.

Access to justice should be measured by people’s ability to exercise their rights without fear or harm. Justice systems need to recognise and respond to the realities of psychosocial disability, ensuring that people are heard and supported, not retraumatised, by the process.

Strengthening the Role of the Australian Human Rights Commission

The DDA should expand the Australian Human Rights Commission’s role beyond education and conciliation to include meaningful investigative and review powers. The AHRC should be able to:

Conduct own-motion investigations and systemic inquiries into discriminatory practices.
Issue compliance notices and monitor implementation.
Compel participation and cooperation from duty holders.
Review decisions where reasonable adjustments or accommodations have been denied on the basis of “unjustifiable hardship.”

These reforms would ensure the AHRC is equipped to act decisively and hold institutions accountable while providing people with disability a fair and accessible path to redress.

Restrictive Practices and Compulsory Treatment

Involuntary treatment and restrictive practices including seclusion and restraint continue to be applied disproportionately to people with psychosocial disability. These practices breach fundamental rights to liberty, equality, and bodily integrity, and are incompatible with Australia’s obligations under Articles 12, 14, 15, and 17 of the CRPD.4

Under Victorian mental health legislation (and comparable laws in other states and territories) these forms of coercive intervention are explicitly permitted only against people who have, or are deemed to have, a mental illness. For example, a person may be detained or forcibly treated if a psychiatrist determines they have a “mental illness” and need immediate treatment to prevent “serious

deterioration” or “serious harm.” No other group of people can legally be subjected to medical treatment without consent under equivalent conditions.5

This legal distinction means that the violation of human rights through compulsory treatment and restrictive practices is lawfully allowed only for people with psychosocial disability, creating a clear breach of the right to equal protection before the law and non-discrimination. It also contravenes the CRPD’s requirement that all persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity and personal liberty on an equal basis with others.6

The DDA must explicitly define coercive psychiatric interventions, including forced medication, forced electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), seclusion, restraint, and indefinite detention as forms of discrimination. Doing so would recognise that laws authorising these practices target a specific group based on disability and therefore amount to disability-based discrimination under international human rights law.

The Act should also provide a clear avenue for redress, including:

AHRC-initiated investigations into the use of restrictive practices across health and disability sectors.
Formal cooperation with state-based oversight bodies such as the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC) and Independent Mental Health Advocacy (IMHA).

Recognising compulsory treatment as discriminatory is essential to aligning Australian law with its international obligations and ensuring that all people, regardless of disability, are equally protected from arbitrary detention and medical intervention without consent. This reform would also complement Victoria’s ongoing mental health reform agenda, which commits to reducing and ultimately eliminating coercive practices, and should inform national consistency in human rights protections across all jurisdictions.

Police and Justice System Accountability

People with psychosocial disability experience disproportionate harm in their interactions with police, courts, and corrections. They are more likely to be subjected to use of force, criminalisation of distress, and custodial settings that fail to provide appropriate care or safeguards. These harms are not isolated incidents, but symptoms of systemic discrimination embedded in policing and justice systems.

The DDA should make clear that police, corrections, courts, and emergency services are public authorities and service providers bound by its anti-discrimination obligations. This would ensure that all justice and law-enforcement agencies are accountable under the same human rights standards that apply to other government services.

Reform should require that:

Police and emergency responders receive mandatory training in lived-experience informed, de-escalation-based approaches to mental health crises.
Courts and custodial settings provide access to supported decision-making, mental-health liaison officers, and peer or advocacy support during all proceedings and detention.

Independent oversight mechanisms review all incidents involving use of force, restraint, or death in custody of a person with psychosocial disability, with findings made public.
Data collection and public reporting are required to monitor discrimination, use of force, and outcomes for people with psychosocial disability across all justice agencies.

Policing and legal responses must move away from coercion toward safety, consent, and accountability. Aligning the DDA with these principles would strengthen national consistency with the CRPD and complement Victoria’s ongoing reforms to create non-coercive, rights-based crisis responses.

Accessible Complaints Pathways

The current DDA complaint system is complex, adversarial, and inaccessible to many people with psychosocial disability. It assumes legal literacy and sustained capacity to self-advocate – expectations that are unrealistic for many people who have experienced trauma, compulsory treatment, or discrimination within the very systems they are seeking to challenge.

Reform of the DDA must ensure that complaint pathways are trauma-informed and responsive to the needs of people with psychosocial disability. The process should empower individuals to seek justice safely and without fear of retraumatisation or reprisal.

VMIAC recommends that the DDA require both the AHRC and the Federal Court of Australia to adopt lived experience-informed and accessible procedures, including:

Access to independent advocacy and peer support throughout the process.
Flexible timelines and remote participation options to accommodate fluctuating health or capacity.
Appointment of mental health liaison officers to guide and support complainants.
Use of plain language materials and accessible communication methods.
Provision for supported decision-making, allowing people to nominate trusted supporters or advocates to assist in navigating complaints or hearings.
Availability of quiet spaces and sensory accommodations in hearing environments.

These measures would help create a system that recognises the realities of psychosocial disability and ensures that legal processes are not a source of further harm.

The DDA should also require the AHRC to publicly report on steps taken to improve accessibility and cultural safety in its complaint-handling functions, including engagement with lived experience organisations to inform continuous improvement.

Legal Assistance and Advocacy

Access to justice depends not only on fair laws but also on the ability to navigate them. Many people with psychosocial disability lack access to affordable and appropriate legal support. Existing legal aid and advocacy programs are underfunded and rarely designed to meet the specific needs of people who have experienced compulsory treatment, discrimination, or coercion. Without accessible legal assistance, most people cannot meaningfully pursue complaints or remedies under the DDA.

To address these systemic gaps, the Commonwealth should establish a dedicated psychosocial disability legal support scheme, providing tailored legal and advocacy services to individuals seeking to challenge discrimination or rights breaches. Such a scheme should include:

Specialist training in mental health and trauma-informed practice for legal and advocacy staff.
Peer or lived experience advocates embedded within service teams.
Integrated referral pathways between advocacy, legal aid, and mental health support services.

Funding should also be increased for the National Disability Advocacy Program (NDAP) to ensure that free, independent advocacy is available across all jurisdictions. NDAP services must be inclusive of people with psychosocial disability and equipped to provide both legal and non-legal support, recognising that many discrimination matters are best resolved through advocacy rather than litigation

Expanding and resourcing these supports would help close the current justice gap, enabling people with psychosocial disability to seek redress and uphold their rights on an equal basis with others.

Lived Experience Oversight and Redress Mechanisms

Lived experience leadership must be central to the design, governance, and monitoring of all complaint and redress mechanisms under the DDA. People with psychosocial disability bring unique insight into the barriers and harms that can occur within complaint systems, as well as the conditions required for safety and trust.

VMIAC recommends the establishment of a Lived Experience Advisory Panel within the AHRC to guide its approach to complaint-handling, policy development, and systemic investigation. This panel should have formal decision-making authority and be adequately resourced to ensure its advice is independent and influential.

In addition to national oversight, lived experience expertise should be embedded throughout complaint-handling processes, including:

Co-design of forms, procedures, and communication materials.
Participation in training and quality assurance for complaint-handling staff.
Regular public reporting on engagement outcomes and improvements made in response to lived experience input.

Embedding lived experience oversight in these ways would help transform existing systems from reactive and intimidating to accountable and human rights–based. It would also ensure that trauma-informed practice is not an optional feature but a core expectation of how justice systems operate.

Part 5 – Exemptions

The DDA currently allows certain exemptions that create significant loopholes for discrimination in key sectors, including health and mental health services. These exemptions enable state and territory laws to authorise practices that would otherwise breach the DDA’s intent and Australia’s international human rights obligations.

VMIAC considers these exemptions to be inconsistent with the purpose and principles of the DDA. They legitimise coercive practices, undermine equality before the law, and deny people with psychosocial disability the same protection from non-consensual treatment and arbitrary detention that is guaranteed to all others.

Restrictive Interventions and Compulsory Treatment

While the DDA does not contain a general exemption for restrictive interventions, it allows for temporary or prescribed exemptions under certain circumstances, including activities conducted under “statutory authority” or on “public health or safety” grounds. In practice, these clauses permit state and territory legislation to override federal disability protections.

For example, the Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 (Vic) and equivalent legislation in other jurisdictions authorise compulsory treatment, seclusion, and restraint. These laws are often prescribed by regulation as exempt from the DDA, meaning that actions taken under them – including forced treatment, detention, and other coercive interventions – are shielded from scrutiny under federal anti-discrimination law.

This creates a situation in which the violation of human rights is permitted only for people with a mental illness, justified by their diagnosis rather than their conduct. No other group in Australia can be lawfully subjected to medical treatment or confinement without consent in this way. Such provisions breach the principle of equality before the law and are inconsistent with Articles 5, 12, 14, and 17 of the CRPD, which guarantee equal legal protection, liberty, and freedom from non-consensual medical intervention.7

VMIAC calls for the DDA to remove or strictly limit exemptions that permit discrimination under statutory authority or public health grounds where they disproportionately affect people with psychosocial disability. Compulsory treatment and restrictive practices should be recognised as forms of disability-based discrimination, and individuals subjected to these practices should have a clear right to seek redress under federal law.

The DDA should also explicitly state that clinical, risk-based, or public safety justifications cannot override the right to informed consent and equal protection before the law. Any exemptions allowing coercive practices must be repealed, and future regulations should not permit state or territory legislation to displace federal human rights standards.

Consistency Across Jurisdictions

Federal anti-discrimination protections must take precedence over inconsistent state and territory laws. The DDA should include an explicit clause establishing the primacy of federal standards where state or territory legislation authorises conduct that would otherwise constitute discrimination.

This reform would ensure that people with psychosocial disability enjoy the same level of legal protection across Australia, regardless of jurisdiction. It would also reinforce the DDA’s role as the overarching legal safeguard against disability-based discrimination, consistent with Australia’s commitments under the CRPD and the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities.

By closing these loopholes, the DDA can finally ensure that no law in Australia permits the denial of basic human rights solely on the basis of mental illness or psychosocial disability.

Part 6 – Modernising the DDA

Language and Accessibility

The DDA should be rewritten in clear, inclusive, and non-pathologising language. Words such as “impairment” and “disturbance” reinforce outdated views and contradict the principles of dignity and equality.

All materials should be available in plain English, Easy Read, and multiple languages, and must be accessible online. Accessibility includes affordability of internet access and the usability of government platforms for people with limited digital literacy or fluctuating mental health.

Assistance Animals

Consumers often rely on psychiatric assistance animals for emotional regulation, and functional support. These supports are inconsistently recognised, and individuals report regular discrimination in housing, transport, and public spaces.

The DDA should:

Explicitly recognise psychiatric assistance animals and emotional support animals.
Establish national standards for training and accreditation, co-designed with lived-experience organisations.
Prohibit denial of access to accredited animals across all areas of public life.
Require public education campaigns to reduce discrimination and improve understanding.

Clear recognition would bring consistency across jurisdictions and reduce a common source of discrimination for people with psychosocial disability.

Ongoing Review and Co-Design

The DDA should require regular statutory review every five years and mandate co-design with people with lived experience. This would ensure the Act remains responsive to changing contexts and continues to uphold the rights it was created to protect.

Digital Discrimination and Algorithmic Harm

Digital and algorithmic systems increasingly shape how people access essential services, supports, and other opportunities. These technologies influence decisions across employment, policing, welfare, housing, healthcare, and eligibility for programs such as the NDIS. For people with psychosocial disability, automated systems can replicate and amplify existing stigma and structural discrimination. Screening tools may flag people as “high-risk” based on mental health history, crisis contacts, or patterns of service use; digital platforms may block access due to behavioural markers associated with distress; and algorithmic profiling can lead to adverse decisions without transparency or accountability.

These forms of discrimination are frequently invisible, difficult to challenge, and often justified as neutral or data-driven despite their discriminatory impact. Algorithmic systems can also create chilling effects, where people avoid seeking support for fear their data may later be used against them. This is especially concerning in contexts where mental health information intersects with police, emergency services, predictive risk modelling, or automated welfare compliance systems.

To address these risks, the DDA should:

Recognise digital, algorithmic, and automated decision-making discrimination as distinct and prohibited forms of disability discrimination.
Require transparency obligations for any government or private entity using automated decision systems, including plain-language explanations of how decisions are made, what data is used, and how bias is mitigated.
Mandate independent human rights and disability impact assessments prior to deploying automated decision systems, particularly in high-risk areas such as policing, immigration, welfare, and health.
Require regular auditing of algorithms to identify indirect or systemic discrimination, with public reporting on findings and corrective actions.
Ensure all public digital systems meet robust accessibility, privacy, and safety standards, including options for human review, appeals, and non-digital access.
Prohibit the use of data profiling that targets or disadvantages people on the basis of mental health status, distress indicators, past compulsory treatment, or crisis-related interactions with police or services.

Strengthening protections against digital and algorithmic discrimination is essential to ensuring that new technologies do not reproduce or deepen inequities for people with psychosocial disability. Embedding these safeguards within the DDA would promote accountability, transparency, and fair decision-making across all systems that rely on data-driven tools.

Part 7 – Further Options for Reform

Supported Decision-Making

Discrimination often occurs when people are denied the right to make or participate in decisions about

their own lives. The DDA should enshrine supported decision-making as a right and require duty holders to provide decision supports before concluding that a person lacks capacity.

Structural Reform to Support the DDA

The effectiveness of a modernised DDA depends on strong governance and oversight. To ensure lasting reform, the DDA should be supported by broader structural changes.

VMIAC recommends:

Establishing a National Disability Rights Commissioner within the AHRC, with dedicated responsibility for monitoring systemic discrimination.
Introducing regular, legislated five-year reviews of the DDA to ensure it remains contemporary and responsive.
Developing a National Disability Rights Action Plan that sets clear, measurable goals for inclusion, co-produced with people with disability.
Strengthening resourcing and authority for disability-led organisations to participate in co-design, monitoring, and evaluation.

These measures would improve accountability and ensure that reforms are not symbolic but embedded into systems, policies, and service delivery.

Alignment with a National Human Rights Act

Rather than renaming the DDA, VMIAC supports broader legislative reform through a national Human Rights Act. A Human Rights Act would:

Provide a consistent rights-based framework for interpreting the DDA.
Strengthen protections for liberty, equality before the law, privacy, and freedom from non-consensual treatment.
Ensure federal agencies consider human rights proactively in all decision-making.

This approach aligns with the Royal Commission’s direction and with national advocacy from disability and mental health consumer peaks.

Conclusion

This review is an opportunity to transform the DDA into legislation that genuinely protects and empowers people with disability. For mental health consumers, the stakes could not be higher. Reform must deliver more than technical adjustments. It must acknowledge that discrimination is sustained by coercive systems and unequal power dynamics. The DDA should give people the means to challenge those systems, seek justice, and live freely and equally in their communities.

VMIAC calls for a modernised, enforceable, and rights-based DDA that:

Centres lived experience and human rights.
Recognises and prohibits coercive psychiatric practices.
Applies to all sectors, including health and policing.

Guarantees supported decision-making and access to justice for all.

Such reform would move Australia closer to fulfilling its obligations under the CRPD and the vision of a society where every person is treated with dignity, respect, and equality.

1 World Health Organization & Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (2023) Mental health, human rights and legislation: Guidance and practice, ISBN 9789240080737, HR/PUB/23/3. Available at: https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/9789240080737 [Accessed 10 October 2025] 2 United Nations (2006) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Treaty Series, 2515, 3. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities [Accessed 7 October 2025] 3 Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (2022) People with disability in Australia, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Available at: https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/disability/people-with-disability-in-australia/contents/employment/employment-rate-and-type [Accessed 10 October 2025] 4 United Nations (2006) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Treaty Series, 2515, 3. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities [Accessed 7 October 2025] 5 Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 (Vic), Chapter 4 – Compulsory assessment and treatment. Available at: https://www.legislation.vic.gov.au/as-made/acts/mental-health-and-wellbeing-act-2022 [Accessed 5 July 2025] 6 United Nations (2006) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, Treaty Series, 2515, 3. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/convention-rights-persons-disabilities [Accessed 7 October 2025] 7 Ibid.