Page 1629 - Week 06 - Wednesday, 2 June 2021
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framework called the National Legal Assistance Partnership. This is an agreement between all states and territories with the commonwealth for funding for legal services.
Over the course of this five-year agreement, Canberra Community Law will receive approximately $3.525 million. The Aboriginal Legal Service will receive approximately $3.994 million, and the Women’s Legal Centre will receive $5.312 million. These funding numbers that I have just informed the Assembly about do not account for COVID-19. The pandemic has caused a significant surge in demand for community legal assistance. Ms Lee provided some examples that Canberra Community Law have experienced, and I know that others are experiencing similar spikes in demand.
This prompted the commonwealth, in partnership with ACT government funding—both levels of government—to provide additional funds to the legal assistance sector to deal with this surge. We were clearly advised that this was going to be the case. People anticipated this surge in demand. But this funding was provided on a one-year basis when it was first provided last year. Of course, at the time we did not know what the duration of the impacts would be. I am grateful that the community legal centres were able to use this additional funding to take on a huge amount of extra work and to support our community at a time of significant need.
Many of the problems caused by the pandemic are not immediately legal. The pandemic has caused financial issues, has driven relationship breakdowns or has driven already dysfunctional relationships to crisis point. At crisis point, a problem does not necessarily become a legal one immediately. Even though the pandemic has caused the problem, we may not see that legal demand right away. We have certainly seen some but, in fact, we are likely to see more of it continuing in the future.
I have also heard from the community that these problems have become more complex. If a woman needs to leave her partner, that might be her immediate need. But what then of any children or property? What happens to the housing situation? And then once her safety can be catered for, how do you go through the family law system? These are all protracted issues. They are not things that generally resolve themselves within 12 months.
Despite these protracted needs caused by the pandemic, and about which we were warned—and we are seeing that level of demand remain stubbornly high—the commonwealth government has decided not to continue the funding that was provided for the initial 12 months. I was disappointed that in the recent federal budget that did not come through, because clearly the cases being outlined by the community legal centres show that that demand has continued to be there and we have not seen a slowdown in that demand occur. I am not sure why the commonwealth decided not to continue that support, because plainly the need still exists.
The commonwealth did provide increased funding to women’s legal centres. I still do not have an exact figure for what that will mean for the Women’s Legal Centre in the ACT. It has been a little difficult to get those numbers. But I do thank the
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