Who guards the guardians? Recent developments concerning the jurisdiction and accountability of ombudsmen

Writing in 1980, Kevin Cho said “Australia rivals Canada in its passion for Ombudsman”, there being at that time executive ombudsmen (or Parliamentary Commissioners) in each of the States, the Commonwealth and the Northern Territory. Since that time, ombudsmen in Australia have “gone forth and multiplied”. The past decade or so has witnessed the expansion of the ombudsman concept into the private sector, with the creation of industry ombudsmen schemes at both national and State levels to handle complaints about privatized essential services, as well as complaints about industries which were never part of the public sector. The ombudsman model has also been chosen to deal with single-issue complaints within a particular industry, a recent example being the proposed Music Industry Ombudsman which w ill have jurisdiction over censorship, but not other aspects of the music industry..