The ACT Human Rights Commission has experienced another year of "consistently high complaints" with nearly 1150 complaints received by the commission.
There has also been a large increase in victims of crime applying for financial assistance and the amount paid to victims, the commission's annual report has shown.
ACT acting human rights commissioner president Heidi Yates said the increase in the number of complaints was attributed to a growing awareness of the commission.
"We have seen another year of consistently high complaints, which we link to a growing awareness about using the Commission's complaints process to resolve concerns and issues," Ms Yates said.
"In the past year, we also provided significantly more financial assistance and client coordination to victims of crime than in previous years."
There were 1147 complaints received over the year, which was slightly lower than last year, where 1164 complaints were received, but much higher than the 829 received in 2019-20.
The highest number of complaints were about health services at 760, followed by discrimination at 255 and vulnerable people at 43.
Many of the health complaints related to "treatment, the professional conduct of health practitioners, and communication between practitioners and patients about consent, expectations of treatment and risks associated with particular treatments or procedures", the report said.
The most frequent health complaints were about an individual practitioner at 382, followed by the public health services at 224 and general practice at 68.
Most of the health complaints were resolved through an explanation being provided and there were 110 instances of an apology being made in relation to the complaint.
Of the 255 discrimination complaints, more than half were related to disability. There was also a high number of discrimination complaints related to race.
The commission provided an example of an Indigenous man who alleged he had been subjected to negative comments from colleagues on the basis of his race.
The employee was also forced to attend an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural awareness program despite his background. He said he did not want to attend because it was a traumatic experience for him. He said he had no choice but to resign from his job. The commission helped in a conciliation process and the employer eventually paid him $50,000.
The commission's victims of crime financial assistance scheme also experienced an 86 per cent jump on last year in the number of people applying for assistance. There was $9.4 million in payments made to victims, this was compared to $2.4 million last year.
"These gains have been made possible because of a multifaceted and concerted effort to improve the way that the scheme works," the report said.
"In particular, the financial assistance scheme team have worked hard this year to streamline systems and processes and to reduce the time it takes to assess an application.
"In doing so, the financial assistance scheme team have made substantial inroads into the existing backlog of applications, which is reflected in the significant increase in payments."
