ABSTRACT
The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System (2019–2021) made a raft of recommendations aimed at transforming Victoria’s mental health system. All the Commission’s recommendations have been accepted by the Victorian Government and reform is underway. The Commission saw the need for new mental health legislation to provide the foundational architecture of the new system. In urging new legislative reform, the Royal Commission sought to place the right to ‘the highest attainable standard of mental health and wellbeing’ as the primary objective of the new Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022 (Vic). This chapter examines the provision of the new legislation in light of the right to health in international human rights law and the obligations contained in the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic). The chapter shows that the new legislation does not give credence to the right to informed consent which is a key component of the right to health. In doing so, the legislation fails to deliver on a key objective of the Royal Commission – the displacement of compulsion as the centrepiece of Victorian mental health law.
