According to the Queensland Mental Health Commission (the Commission) in a project called ‘The Queensland Mental Health Act and Human Rights Project’(2019), the Queensland Mental Health Act 2016 does not properly protect the human rights of adults being treated involuntarily for mental illness due to (amongst other reasons) “a long-standing culture, or accepted way of treating people, that assumes medical opinion and diagnosis is always more important than a person’s individual experiences” . Clearly, nothing has changed in the 5 years since this project was undertaken.
Employees of the Queensland Police Service, the Queensland Ambulance Service and Queensland Health and those entities themselves have directly contravened and/or unreasonably failed to act to protect at least the following sections of the Human Rights Act 2019 (Cth) in this matter:
Section 19: Freedom of movement,
Section 17: Protection from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment,
Section 21: Freedom of Expression,
Section 25: Privacy and Reputation,
Section 29: Right to liberty and security of person,
Section 30: Humane treatment when deprived of liberty.