The Anglican Church has decided to give priests in Australia the option of breaking the confidentiality of confessions.

The general synod, meeting in Adelaide, has voted for the historic change to cover serious crimes, such as child abuse.

It has decided it will be up to individual dioceses to adopt the policy.

Adelaide's Anglican Archbishop Jeffrey Driver says the change makes sense but there will not be a hard-and-fast rule.

"In matters where lives and genuine wellbeing of people is at risk, the Church has decided that a priest may disclose [but] it's not saying a priest must disclose," he said.

"It comes as a response to the sad story of child abuse.

"In some what you might call extreme circumstances, a priest may not be bound by the seal of the confessional."

Archbishop says it reinforces pastoral practices

Archbishop Driver says it is important support for priests in their work but he is confident they already have been seeking ways to support anyone at risk.

"I can't imagine how a priest wouldn't pastorally have found a way to ensure that a person came to confess of something that put a child at risk that a priest wouldn't do absolutely everything to ensure that a child was protected and that's been my pastoral directive in this diocese for some time," he said.

He says priests already would not have given absolution and would have insisted the person in the confessional report their actions to authorities as a requirement of repentance.

Archbishop Driver says in his 40 years of work he has found such confessions to be rare.

"What this [church] legislation is doing has made it absolutely clear that that's what the church expects and also permits, so clergy are not put in the position of feeling that they're breaking a sacred vow," he said.

"It releases them from that so they can do with good conscience what I believe they know they should do."

Philip Freier says it is part of making abuse perpetrators accountable.

He says it would be unethical of him to comment on whether the Catholic Church needed to consider a change of policy.

The primate-elect of the Anglican Church of Australia says letting its priests break the confidentiality of confessions will help ensure the church does not provide a cloak for child abusers.

Archbishop of Melbourne Philip Freier, who will be elevated at the end of the synod, says it is an important part of making perpetrators accountable.

"We want those people to see as part of their true repentance that they need to be accountable for their behaviour and have made a disclosure to police. So we're all for people seeking the amendment of their life, the confession of their sins and embracing proper accountability for their offending behaviour," he said.

"We want to do all that we can do to make sure that child-sex abuse has no place in Australian society or in the church."