Disclosing this data assists the Mental Health and Wellbeing to:

• Assists the MHWC in exercising its regulatory functions and better achieving its goals by promoting transparency and accountability.

• Better reflect their statutory functions under the previous Mental Health Act 2014 and the current Mental Health and Wellbeing Act 2022.

• Improve the quality f the recommendations as they are open to feedback from the community.

• Encourages greater uptake of its recommendations because they are public.

Disclosing these recommendations helps designated mental health services (hospitals and community clinics) by:

• Enabling horizontal learning and inquiry between services.

• Driving service improvement through transparent benchmarking of services.

Releasing this data helps consumers and carers by:

• Supporting them to identify whether similar recommendations about the same issue have been made to a service recently, and their implementation status if published.

• Supporting complainants to advocate to the MHCC or MHWC for greater enforcement if similar recommendations have not been implemented over time.

• Helping them and their peers to identify the quality of recommendations made by the MHCC/MHWC, leveraging the unique knowledge of consumers, Aboriginal communities, trans and gender diverse mental health advocates, and families.

Release of the data helps the community by:

• Allowing the public to examine whether the MHWC is exercising its regulatory functions effectively.

• Providing clarity about the MHCC's regulatory approach, including its effectiveness.

• Helping assess how Victoria’s regulatory oversight addresses ongoing human rights issues in the public mental health system.

• Contributing to a broader effort to build a mental health system that earns trust by respecting dignity and protecting human rights through effective regulatory practice.

Release of the data benefits accountability and transparency by:

• Bringing greater accountability and transparency to both the MHCC/MHWC and DMHS.

• Inviting a more complete examination of whether the regulatory relationship is affected or undermined by regulatory capture.

• Providing information to the media to expose poor decisions, conflicts of interest, and public administration errors, ensuring accountability of public agencies.

• Enlisting third parties like NGOs and advocacy groups in the regulatory process to hold public agencies accountable.

• Improving vertical accountability by making public information accessible to citizens, NGOs, and the media, allowing them to alert Ministers if a regulator is underperforming.

• Helping public agencies make better decisions by sharpening their consideration of the public interest, stakeholder views, and future accountability for regulatory choices.

• Highlighting or clarifying whether enforcement decisions appear in furtherance of legislative objectives and utilise the full range of compliance powers afforded under relevant legislation.

Release of this data enhances systemic improvement and research by:

• Enhancing research and analysis by third parties, such as NGOs and academics.

• Improving government decision-making into emerging problems and trends.

• Revealing where the system has needed to improve, who has needed to do so, who has taken action, and the quality of suggested improvements in response to human rights problems.