September 06, 2024 | Katie Wand
Today, National Cabinet announced $3.9 billion in funding for legal assistance over five years, including an uplift for pay parity for the community legal sector. This equates to an additional $800 million to legal assistance over a five-year period when compared to the previous five years. The investment will be shared across four providers of legal assistance (Community Legal Centres, Legal Aid Commissions, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services and Family Violence Prevention Legal Services), and it is not yet clear what fraction of the total will be received by Community Legal Centres.
Whilst welcoming the announcement of an injection of funding for pay parity and the guarantee that funding for Community Legal Centres will continue once the current agreement ends on 30 June, the commitment does not go far enough to ensure access to justice in our communities.
Without a significant injection of funding for Community Legal Centres, our sector remains deeply concerned about the sustainability of the sector and the impact this will have on communities.
Community Legal Centres alone have called for an increase of $135 million per year to sustainably address community demand for our services, plus an additional $95 million per year to meet family and domestic violence demand. The additional funding to legal assistance will be nowhere near enough for all legal assistance providers to meet legal need. The community legal sector is urging the Commonwealth Government to keep funding negotiations moving.
Community Legal Centres are a lifeline for people experiencing hardship who are in need of legal assistance. However, due to chronic underfunding from government, 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 work with other social service professionals to identify and resolve complex and intersecting legal, social and financial 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.
For months, the national community legal sector has been campaigning for the Commonwealth Government to urgently address the funding crisis and to #SaveCommunityLegalCentres.
Although we are encouraged by the Commonwealth Government’s action to begin to address the issue, today’s announcement is a far cry from what is needed for the community legal sector to sustain operations and to meet the legal needs of people in their communities.
Louisa Gibbs, CEO at the Federation of Community Legal Centres said:
“Today’s funding announcement has provided some assurance that the dire funding crisis is finally being addressed by the government. However, we will hold off breathing a sigh of relief for now.
“It is currently unclear from the announcement what the additional funding will mean for Community Legal Centres, and how it will be divided between the four providers of legal assistance. But we know with certainty that the quantum is nowhere near what is needed to meet legal need.
“Inadequate funding will ultimately mean that more people in need of legal assistance will be denied access to justice, and that their unresolved problems will be at risk of escalation. Around 40 per cent of clients at Victorian Community Legal Centres are women who are experiencing or are at risk of experiencing family violence, and around 70 per cent of clients are living on less than $32,000 per year.
“We hear that the government wants to be serious in finding solutions to support victim survivors of family violence and people in our communities experiencing hardship and disadvantage. Investing in the programs of Community Legal Centres – that have been providing proven programs of success for more than 50 years – is a crucial way of achieving this.”
