Who do I actually have to tell about my prescription?

What the law actually says

There is no Act governing disclosure of a prescribed medicine, and looking for one is the mistake. What exists is four separate obligations from four separate sources, and a rule stated across all of them would be wrong in most of them.

1. Insurance — a duty not to misrepresent, not a duty to volunteer.

For a consumer insurance contract, s 20B of the Insurance Contracts Act 1984 imposes a duty to take reasonable care not to make a misrepresentation before the contract is entered into. Whether you took reasonable care is judged on all the circumstances, and s 20B(3) directs attention to things that are not about you at all: how clear and how specific the insurer's questions were, how clearly the insurer explained why they mattered, and whether an agent was acting for you. Section 20B(4) adds anything about you the insurer knew or ought reasonably to have known.

Then s 20B(5), which is the provision worth remembering: the insured is not to be taken to have made a misrepresentation merely because the insured failed to answer a question, or gave an obviously incomplete or irrelevant answer to a question. A vague question is the insurer's problem, not yours. (Fraud is a different matter — s 20B(6) puts a fraudulent misrepresentation squarely in breach.)

2. Employment — employment law, and it cuts towards you.

An employer's directions are governed by employment law, not health law, and the Fair Work Act 2009 constrains what they can do about what they learn. Section 351 prohibits an employer taking adverse action against an employee or prospective employee because of, among other things, physical or mental disability — subject to s 351(2)(b), action taken because of the inherent requirements of the particular position. That is the real question in a workplace argument, and it is about the job, not the prescription.

If it reaches a dismissal, s 387 lists what the Fair Work Commission must weigh: whether there was a valid reason related to capacity or conduct, including its effect on the safety and welfare of other employees; whether you were notified of it; and whether you were given an opportunity to respond.

3. A statutory declaration on a form — real, specific, and narrow.

Some applications require a health declaration by statute, and those are genuine obligations you cannot decline. Firearms licensing is the clearest example: under s 7(2) of the Firearms Act 2015 (SA), a person with a physical or mental illness, condition or disorder that would make it unsafe for them to possess a firearm is not a fit and proper person — a definition rather than a discretion. Answer those questions. Section 7(3)(e) makes fraud or deception in obtaining a licence its own ground, and it outlives the condition that prompted it. The eight firearms Acts differ and this is one example, not the general rule.

4. A term in a contract you signed. No statute at all — whatever you agreed to. It binds you because you agreed, and it is worth reading before assuming it says something.

What is not on that list is everyone else. An employer asking out of curiosity, a landlord, a gym, a school, a relative. They may ask. Asking is not an entitlement.

What happens if it goes wrong

The consequences differ by source and there is no general answer — which is the point, not an evasion.

Insurance: a misrepresentation can cost you the policy or the claim. Insurance is the one place where a careless answer is genuinely expensive, and also the one place the Act gives you the most protection against a badly-worded question.

Employment: adverse action because of a disability is a civil remedy provision under the Fair Work Act. If it goes wrong, the question is about the inherent requirements of the job and about process, both of which produce a record.

Statutory declarations: a false answer is usually an offence in its own right, separate from and longer-lived than whatever it was concealing.