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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 62 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

it will come to its senses and pay up, so that the interests of justice in this Territory can be properly served. If the Commonwealth continues with this action, the interests of justice in the Territory will not be properly served, and it would be a very sad day if that should come to pass.

MS REILLY (4.39): The question we are looking at this afternoon is the ready availability of legal aid. There is plenty of evidence around to show what happens when it is not readily available. Access to justice is a basic tenet for a just and fair society, and the national principles on legal aid point this out. In a submission by the Law Council of Australia to the legal aid inquiry they say that the objectives of legal aid should be:

... to ensure that the protection or assertion of the legal rights and interests of people in the Australian community are not prejudiced by reason of their inability

(1) to obtain access to independent advice;

(2) to afford the financial cost of appropriate legal representation;

(3) to obtain access to the Federal, State or Territory legal systems; or

(4) to obtain adequate information about access to the law and legal system.

These are very important principles under which we should be operating.

One of the concerns in the discussion on legal aid both today and at other times is the split in considering which are Commonwealth responsibilities and which are State responsibilities. Considering the very important advocacy work that the Attorney-General has been doing, I was disappointed to hear him say he is not interested in picking up the slack of what the Commonwealth is not taking account of at the moment. I am disappointed because as a community we will miss out; we will lose if we go back to deciding what is a Commonwealth matter, what is a State matter and never the twain shall meet. There are a number of instances where you cannot split it easily. One of the results will be that legal aid and access to justice will be there only for those who have the money to pay or who know the system. It will not be available to all of the community in any sort of equitable way; it will be a very reduced access.

We have a number of instances of what happens when there is no legal aid. We also know that the access to legal aid has always been constrained in some way. We have evidence of unmet need. A look at the previous Commonwealth Government's inquiry into legal aid that led to the justice statement shows there were already a number of dissatisfactions with access to legal aid, particularly in relation to civil and family matters. The then Commonwealth Government was going to increase the funding for legal aid over four years. Now we are looking at a situation where there is going to be reduction in legal aid funding. We have a situation where we have the Commonwealth saying it will look after some matters and the States can look after the others, which fails to take account of the fact that in a number of instances cases come under several jurisdictions.

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