Your ref: A1307290

29 May 2026

Mr Peter Rundle MLA
Chair, Community Development and Justice Standing Committee
Parliament House
4 Harvest Tce
West Perth WA 6005

By email: lacdjsc@parliament.wa.gov.au

Dear Mr Rundle

Inquiry into Guardianship and Administration in Western Australia

Thank you for your letter dated 8 April 2026 regarding the Committee’s investigation into how the Office of the Public Advocate and the Public Trustee deliver services to vulnerable people, as part of your inquiry into the guardianship and administration system in Western Australia.

I am pleased to assist the Committee by making the attached submission on item 3 of the terms of reference: ‘The adequacy of mechanisms currently in place to resolve complaint, disputes and allegations’.

Ombudsman Western Australia oversees public sector complaint handling and promotes improvements in accessibility and effectiveness, including through education and guidance to agencies, particularly for vulnerable and underrepresented groups.

Summary

Based on the information we considered, the Public Advocate’s mechanisms for resolving complaints are generally adequate and improving, with very positive steps taken to support accessibility for vulnerable groups. There are some opportunities for improvement to the transparency of its complaint handling system, particularly the lack of public information on its internal complaint handling process and policy, and any internal review process. There are also opportunities to strengthen accountability by more detailed reporting on complaints.

From the information our office considered, there are areas in which the adequacy of the Public Trustee’s mechanisms to resolve complaints need to be strengthened. There is no accessible information available on the Public Trustee’s website about how to make a complaint, limiting the ease with which vulnerable clients can complain. The Public

Trustee’s focus on early resolution complaint handling is positive, however the apparent lack of record keeping about early resolution complaints limits oversight and learning.

As with the Public Advocate, more publicly available information on the Public Trustee’s internal complaints handling systems would strengthen responsiveness and accountability. The collection and reporting of broader demographic data would also assist the Public Trustee to make its complaints handling system more accessible to vulnerable client groups.

What we considered

This feedback was informed by data our office holds on complaints it has received about the Public Advocate and Public Trustee, and by publicly available information contained on these agencies’ websites and in their annual reports.

The feedback is general in nature and is not an audit of the Public Advocate’s or Public Trustee’s complaint handling systems. We also have not considered either agency’s complaint handling systems against the Australian Standard ‘Guidelines for complaints handling in organisations’ (AS 10002:2022).

I ask the Committee to note that the Public Advocate and the Public Trustee have not had an opportunity to comment on the issues raised in our submission.

Principles of effective complaint handling

Our feedback is grounded on the principles of effective complaint handling outlined in our Guidelines on Effective Complaint Handling. This covers three areas that an effective complaint handling system should address:

1. Enabling complaints: Arrangements for enabling people to make complaints are customer focused, visible, accessible and valued and supported by management.
2. Responding to complaints: Complaints are responded to promptly and handled objectively, fairly and confidentially. Remedies are provided where complaints are upheld and there is a system for review.
3. Accountability and learning from complaints: There are clear accountabilities for complaint handling and complaints are used to stimulate organisational improvements.

I trust this information is of assistance to the Committee.

Yours sincerely

redacted

David Robinson
DEPUTY OMBUDSMAN

Attach.

Submission to the Inquiry into Guardianship and Administration in Western Australia

3. The adequacy of mechanisms currently in place to resolve complaints, disputes and allegations.

Summary

Based on the information available, the Public Advocate’s mechanisms to resolve complaints are generally adequate, but there are opportunities for improvement. There are gaps in the Public Trustee’s mechanisms to resolve complaints and clear opportunities to strengthen its complaint handling system.

Preparation of this submission involved consideration of data held by our office for the past 7 years to identify whether there were clear trends. Increases in complaint volume for both offices were generally in line with increases in complaint volume across other agencies.

The Office of the Public Advocate:

• The Public Advocate has taken positive steps to improve accessibility, including Easy Read complaint information and some Aboriginal language resources.
• It aims to respond to complaints promptly and uses senior staff to manage them, showing it places value on the handling of complaints.
• The Public Advocate collects useful data about clients, including about its Aboriginal clients, which likely facilitates its focus on accessibility for vulnerable groups.
• There is no publicly available internal complaint handling policy or clear internal review process.
• There is an opportunity to improve transparency and accessibility by:
  • reporting complaint categories and outcomes; and
  • collecting and reporting even broader demographic data.

The Public Trustee:

• There appears to be no accessible information available on the website about how to make a complaint. This reduces accessibility for vulnerable clients.
• The Public Trustee uses early resolution to resolve complaints quickly, which is a positive approach.
• Complaints resolved through early resolution do not appear to be recorded.
• An inconsistency between a decrease in complaints reported by the Public Trustee and an increase in complaints to the Ombudsman, together with growth in its client numbers, highlights the need for better data collection and reporting on complaints.
• There is inadequate demographic data collected and reported about clients, which will hinder the Public Trustee making its complaints handling system accessible to vulnerable client groups.

Office of the Public Advocate

Complaints over time

There has been an overall increase in complaints to our office about the Public Advocate from the 2019/20 financial year until the 2024/25 financial year. The increase in complaints, from 10 complaints in 2019/20 to 19 in 2024/25, has not been consistent year to year. For example, 24 complaints were received in the 2023/24 financial year. The small volume of complaints received each year means that trends cannot be reliably identified.

The Public Advocate’s own reporting confirms that complaints are increasing, with its Annual Reports showing an increase from 53 complaints in the 2019/2020 period to 106 complaints in the 2024/25. An increase in complaints is expected given the continuing significant increase in people under the Public Advocate’s guardianship.

In March 2021, the former Attorney General, the Honourable John Quigley MLA, requested the Ombudsman’s office investigate three complaints about delays in the Public Advocate notifying families of the deaths of their relatives, Mrs Joyce Savage, Mr Robert Ayling and Mr Kenneth Hartley, who were under the Public Advocate’s guardianship. Our office’s report, released in July 2021, made recommendations to prevent a recurrence of such delays. The Public Advocate took steps to implement the recommendations as we found in our follow up report released in October 2022. Our office has not identified any further issues with the time taken by the Public Advocate to make notifications about the deaths of people under its guardianship.

Enabling complaints

The Public Advocate has been improving the accessibility of its complaints process. Its Easy Read factsheet ‘How to give feedback or make a complaint’ is a positive accessibility measure for people with low literacy, communication disability or language barriers. The Factsheet outlines the steps to make an internal complaint or to complain externally to the Ombudsman’s office, including various methods of contact.

The Public Advocate makes some key information guides available on its website in 5 Western Australian Aboriginal languages as audio translations. This indicates a strong focus on accessibility for Aboriginal people. Given the Public Advocate has already identified there is value in translating key information into Aboriginal languages, it could further enable Aboriginal people to make complaints by making an audio translation about how to make a complaint available in Aboriginal languages.

Currently the Public Advocate’s main website page has no reference to how to make a complaint, with only the Department of Justice’s ‘feedback’ footer visible. Accessibility could be improved by featuring the complaint factsheet on the main page.

Responding to Complaints

The Public Advocate’s 2024/25 Annual Report states that ‘the Office aims to respond to all grievances within 10 working days of the complaint being lodged and advise the relevant people (in writing) of the outcome and any corrective action to be taken’. It also provides information that all formal complaints for the financial year were ‘considered by the Public Advocate, a senior manager or a senior policy officer’. This indicates that the agency places value on timely complaints handling and is willing to use experienced staff to handle complaints.

Our office was unable to find any detailed information on the Public Advocate’s internal process for handling complaints (apart from the Department of Justice’s agency wide publications), or information on any independent internal review process. There is no publicly available complaint handling policy with guidelines on how the Public Advocate manages complaints and the Department of Justice’s guidance is not specific to the Public Advocate. This represents an opportunity for improvement in ensuring there is clear and consistent response to complaints.

Accountability and learning from complaints

In its 2024/2025 Annual Report, the Public Advocate provided a detailed profile of people under its guardianship by types of decision-making disability and age. It also provided the percentage of Aboriginal people under its guardianship, which is 17% of the total number of people under guardianship. This shows that Aboriginal people are over-represented compared with their population within the state of about 3%. This is important information which should assist the Public Advocate to prioritise areas of improvement for its complaint resolution mechanisms.

There is an opportunity for the Public Advocate to obtain further information to refine its accessibility strategy by collecting and reporting on other measures of diversity, such as cultural, linguistic and gender diversity.

The Public Advocate could improve complaints transparency and accountability, which would improve learnings and lead to administrative improvements. The Public Advocate publishes overall complaint numbers in its annual report, but there is no breakdown of complaint categories or complainant demographics. If demographic information is tracked for complainants, it can help identify service improvements for particular client groups.

The Public Trustee

Complaints over time

There has been an overall increase in the number of complaints to our office about the Public Trustee since the 2019/20 financial year. This is in line with the significant increase over this period in the number of trusts and administration orders the Public Trustee manages.

There is a clearer upward trend in the complaints received by our office about the Public Trustee compared with the Public Advocate. This is likely to be due to the

volume of complaints our office has received about the Public Trustee is greater than the volume received about the Public Advocate. The increase in complaints, from 23 complaints in 2019/20 to 44 in 2024/25, has not been consistent year to year. For example, 56 complaints were received in the 2023/24 financial year.

The greater volume of complaints about the Public Trustee is likely to be because the Public Trustee deals with a larger number of clients than the Public Advocate. This is still a relatively small volume of complaints to be able to identify trends. There are no clearly significant themes in the complaints received by our office in this period.

In its 2024/25 Annual Report, the Public Trustee reported a decrease in complaints which had been ongoing over a number of years. In the 2023/24 Annual Report, the Public Trustee explained the 25.4% decrease in complaints since the previous year was the result of a ‘concerted effort by Public Trustee staff to resolve complaints on the same day that they are received’.

Enabling complaints

Our office could not locate accessible information about making a complaint on the Public Trustee’s public website. While it has 10 Easy Read factsheets, none of them provide information about making a complaint or the complaints process. We were also unable to locate information on making a complaint translated into common languages. This presents an opportunity for the Public Trustee to improve its accessibility for its vulnerable clients.

There is a feedback tab under the contact details for the Public Trustee on its main web page, as well as the feedback tab at the bottom of the page featured on most Department of Justice agency sites. However, this tab leads to the generic Department of Justice feedback mechanism with no explanatory information.

Responding to complaints

The Public Trustee publicly reports that it uses an early resolution complaints management strategy, based on informal local resolution of complaints through its existing frequent contact between clients and staff. If a complaint is resolved within 24 hours by early resolution, the complaints are not recorded in the Department of Justice’s Customer Feedback Management System (CFMS).

Our office encourages the early resolution of complaints by informal mechanisms as a way to resolve complaints quickly. When effectively implemented, this method can also be a stimulus to improve conflict and dispute resolution skills at the operational level of an agency. However, if the Public Trustee does not track its early resolution outcomes, it will be hindered in its ability to assess the effectiveness of its complaints response and identify where improvements are required.

Similar to the Public Advocate, our office was unable to find any detailed information on the Public Trustee’s internal process for handling complaints (apart from the Department of Justice’s agency wide publications), or information on any independent internal review process. Again, there is no publicly available complaint

handling policy specific to the Public Trustee, and this represents an opportunity for improvement in ensuring there is clear and consistent response to complaints.

Accountability and Learning

There are opportunities for the Public Trustee to improve its transparency and accountability about complaints. The Public Trustee’s practice of not recording complaints resolved by early resolution within 24 hours may mean that the Public Trustee is losing valuable information which could help it improve both its complaint handling and other administrative practices. It is also unclear whether any guidance exists for staff around when to refer a complaint to the CFMS process.

Keeping records of early resolution of complaints is an essential accountability mechanism to ensure that vulnerable clients feel free to voice concerns and that those concerns are being handled fairly. If the Public Advocate is keeping internal records about early resolution complaints, then publishing representative data from these records in its Annual Reports would improve accountability.

The Public Trustee explains the decrease in complaints it has received to the CFMS complaints system as a result of its concerted effort to resolve complaints quickly through early resolution. However, this does not align with the increase in complaints received by our office, as well as the growth in total trusts managed and total clients under State Administrative Tribunal orders reported by the Public Trustee over the same period. This lends further weight to the need for the Public Trustee to keep records of its early resolution complaints, or if it is already doing so, to publicly report on these complaints.

The Public Trustee did not provide any demographic breakdown for its client base in its 2024/2025 Annual Reports, except in relation to age. It did not provide information on cultural, linguistic or gender diversity profiles. There is no information provided in the Annual Report, or otherwise publicly available, on the proportion of Aboriginal people who have the Public Trustee appointed as an administrator for their financial affairs.

Relevantly, the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability reported in its volume on ‘Enabling autonomy and access’, that there was no publicly available data available for the percentage of First Nations people represented by public trustees in several Australian states, including Western Australia. One of the Royal Commission’s recommendations for the promotion of accessible information and communications was to ‘recognise the diversity of people with disability and the many formats and languages that people may require information to be provided in’.

The Public Trustee will improve the safety and accessibility of its complaint mechanisms for all the people it serves by enhancing its knowledge of its client base.