August 20, 2024 | Katie Wand
Tomorrow, representatives from 160 Community Legal Centres will launch a national campaign at Australian Parliament House to call on the Federal Government to save the frontline legal services that support around 180,000 people each year.
More than half a century ago, the first Victorian Community Legal Centres were established. There are now 50 Community Legal Centres in Victoria including two Aboriginal Legal Services, and the movement for social justice is stronger and more
vibrant than ever.
Community Legal Centres are a lifeline for people experiencing hardship who are in need of legal assistance. However, due to chronic underfunding from government, Community Legal Centres are struggling to keep afloat.
The Save Community Legal Centres Campaign is urging the Commonwealth Government for immediate funding to enable Community Legal Centres to keep their doors open and lights on.
Every day, 1,000 Australians are turned away from Community Legal Centres that don’t have the resources to help them. That’s twice as many people as they have capacity to serve.
Community Legal Centres play a vital role in resolving issues or preventing them from escalating. Embedded in communities, community lawyers identify and resolve intersecting, compounding legal and non-legal issues. By investing in the community legal sector, the government alleviates pressure on other systems, such as the criminal legal, housing, and medical systems, and social services.
The Save Community Legal Centres campaign is a community-wide response to the Federal Government's failure to deliver additional funding in the 2024 Federal Budget and its slow progress in advancing a new national funding agreement. The current agreement ends on 30 June 2025, but without any confirmed commitments for the future, Community Legal Centres are unable to plan for the future. Many are having to make fraught decisions about which programs and staff they need to cut in the absence of funding certainty.
In Victoria, staff losses and reduced operations as a result of funding uncertainty are happening at Community Legal Centres across the state, further straining a system that is on the verge of collapse.
To save Community Legal Centres, we’re asking the Federal Government for:
- Immediate funding injection of $35 million to address the workforce crisis, as recommended by the Independent Review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership
- Additional $135 million each year to sustainably address overall community demand
- Additional $95 million each year to fully meet domestic and family violence demand
Organisations backing the campaign include ACOSS, Australian Services Union, CHOICE, Financial Counselling Australia, Save the Children, Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, Mission Australia, Amnesty International and the Centre for Excellence in Child and Family Welfare.
“For years the community legal sector has had to manage tight budgets and navigate funding uncertainty, but the sector is now at breaking point”, said Louisa Gibbs, CEO at the Federation of Community Legal Centres.
“We’re calling on our MPs to ensure that community legal centres are funded properly to provide the legal advice, representation and education that create a fairer Australia. Without urgent funding, many Community Legal Centres will need to reduce their services to their communities – or even close – leaving more Australians without the support they need when they are facing some of life’s toughest problems.”
