Australian Tribunals Research Articles

The publication of impaired doctors' identity by Australian and New Zealand tribunals: law, practice, and reform.

For doctors with mental health or substance use disorders, publication of their name and sensitive medical history in disciplinary decisions may adversely impact their health and may reinforce barriers to accessing early support and treatment. This article challenges the view that naming impaired doctors or disclosing the intimate details of their medical condition in disciplinary decisions always serves the public interest in open justice. We analysed and compared the approach of Australian and New Zealand health tribunals to granting orders that suppress the name and/or medical history of impaired doctors. This revealed that Australian tribunals are less likely to grant non-publication orders compared to New Zealand, despite shared common law history and similar medical regulatory frameworks. We argue that Australian tribunals could be more circumspect when dealing with sensitive information in published decisions, especially where such information does not directly form a basis for the decision reached. This could occur without compromising public protection or the underlying goals of open justice. Finally, we argue that a greater distinction should be made between those aspects of decisions that deal with conduct allegations, where full details should be published, and those that deal with impairment allegations, where only limited information should be disclosed.

Homer in Australian Reasons for Judgment or Decision

The paper discusses allusions to Homer or his works in the reasons for judgment of Australian courts or the reasons for decision of Australian tribunals. The allusions were to Homer's personal attributes, to the cause of his death and to acts, matters and things in his poetry.

Australian Tribunals as World Leaders?

Paper presented at the Public Law Weekend Conference at the Australian National University on 31 October 2008. This paper provides a comparative perspective of the administrative tribunal systems in Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada in terms of structure, role and accessibility.

Burdened by Proof: How the Australian Refugee Review Tribunal has Failed Lesbian and Gay Asylum Seekers

Our argument in this paper is that the evidentiary practices and procedures that have been developed by the Australian Refugee Review Tribunal are operating at a routinely low standard. Such practices contribute to decisions that are manifestly unfair and potentially wrong in law. A recent working paper from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ('the UNHCR') notes that evidentiary questions have been 'largely ignored in the academic literature.'1 Our conclusions are drawn from our detailed study of more than 300 refugee tribunal decisions made in Canada and Australia in response to asylum claims brought by lesbians and gay men. Our overall frame of inquiry in this study considers how the respective tribunals grapple with the issue of identity, the complex cluster of dilemmas around the public/private divide, the inability of many decision-makers to imagine the 'other' who stands before them in these claims, and the way this area of law encodes and reflects homophobic stereotyping.2 In developing these conclusions, and in particular in examining the marked differences we found between the Australian and the Canadian decisions, we found that the role played by evidentiary practices of the respective tribunals was vital. This article focuses upon how evidence is dealt with in the Australian Tribunal. The comparative data from our study forms a back drop to the