Too many Australians with disability and psychosocial needs are slipping through the cracks of a system that is meant to protect them. Experience and reporting from advocates and oversight bodies, including former Victorian Public Advocate Dr Colleen Pearce, reveal repeated failures in care, investigation, oversight, staffing, accountability, and clinical decision making across mental health services, disability support services, residential settings, and care facilities nationwide.

People with disability face alarmingly high rates of violence, neglect, abuse, and exploitation, often without effective investigation, support, or justice. Reports have identified more than a thousand unresolved allegations of neglect and abuse involving at risk adults with disability, alongside inadequate responses from authorities responsible for their safety and wellbeing.

At the same time, people receiving public mental health care report systemic clinical failures. Individuals are placed on treatment orders without thorough assessment, misdiagnosed, inadequately evaluated, or neglected due to an overrun system. Short, superficial consultations and a reliance on medication without comprehensive evaluation lead to ineffective treatment for the wrong conditions, compounding harm rather than alleviating it.

Many people describe the public mental health system as a production line rather than a therapeutic service. Consultations are often brief, fragmented, and lacking continuity, with insufficient time spent understanding a person’s history, trauma, or complex needs. This creates serious risks, particularly when medications are prescribed without proper assessment, review, or follow up.

This is unacceptable.

We, the undersigned, call on the Commonwealth and State and Territory Governments to:

Ensure independent, transparent, and timely investigations of all reports of abuse, neglect, and exploitation affecting people with disability and those with mental health support needs.

Fund and mandate strong oversight bodies with real authority to hold service providers, institutions, and systems accountable for abuse, neglect, human rights violations, and clinical misconduct.

Investigate doctors and mental health practitioners for improper practice, misconduct, and systemic failures in assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and use of treatment orders.

Implement enforceable safe staffing standards, training requirements, and safeguards across disability support, psychosocial services, group homes, inpatient facilities, and community based services.

Ensure that people in the public mental health system receive thorough, evidence based assessments, appropriate diagnoses, and individualized treatment plans rather than rushed consultations and medication only approaches.

Improve data collection and public reporting so the prevalence of abuse, neglect, misdiagnosis, inappropriate treatment, and systemic failure is visible, measurable, and acted upon with urgency.

Embed people with lived experience and their families in decision making processes to ensure policy and practice reflect real needs rather than assumptions.

Ensure integrated and coordinated care pathways between disability and mental health systems so people no longer fall through gaps between services.

If you believe every Australian deserves dignity, safety, accountability, and genuine care, we urge you to sign this petition.

Together, we can demand real change and build systems that protect and empower rather than fail and ignore.