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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 1 Hansard (18 February) . . Page.. 64 ..

MS REILLY (continuing):

between those who are legally represented and the persons who are representing themselves. There are community legal centres that can fill the legal aid gap in some respects, but these are not supposed to be an alternative to legal aid systems. They can provide only a certain amount of advice and guide people where to go; they cannot be considered as an alternative to good quality, well-funded legal aid.

There is also the pro bono scheme which is run in New South Wales. This has worked well as a complementary service, but it cannot be seen as an alternative service. The Welfare Rights and Legal Centre in the ACT has pointed out a number of instances of situations where they have had to help people who have tried to represent themselves. It has identified the problems that have arisen from this, including the time it has taken. There are also the problems that people have in not understanding the law and not understanding what is happening to them. In situations of eviction from a Housing Trust property, they end up being evicted when, with legal representation, they would have been able to stay in that house. It is important that people have access to legal aid. It is important that we do not get bogged down in deciding what is a Commonwealth matter and what is a State matter. We should be working for a fair and just society and ensuring that everyone has access to justice.

MR MOORE (4.48): Indeed, Madam Deputy Speaker, a fair and just society, with reasonable access to the law and to justice, is what this debate is really about. I noted in this morning's paper that our former colleague in this place and former Attorney-General, Bernard Collaery, raised the issue, in the case of Mr Eastman, that, whereas over a million dollars has been spent on prosecution, the level of money that has been spent on defence, as I recall, he argued, was some $35,000. The imbalance in this style of justice is very starkly seen in those circumstances. On the one hand, we accept that a prosecution is a difficult thing to run. I know that Mr Stefaniak, with his experience, would verify that that is the case. But when we have a situation where the Government, on the one hand, is prepared to spend very large sums of money on an ad hoc basis but, on the other hand, is reluctant to spend money on legal aid, we have a problem.

The reluctance to spend money on legal aid falls into two categories. The most critical one at the moment is the rejection by the Federal Government of legal aid spending that had been put aside by the previous Labor Government and the so-called rationalisation of that legal aid spending, the result of which is significant cuts to legal aid right across the country. That is contrary to a Liberal Party promise at the last election. It is another one of those promises that the Federal Government does not seem to worry about now that it has the excuse that there is a so-called $8 billion black hole. The argument is wearing thin, and very few of us accept it; but it does raise the general issue of the sort of brinkmanship that Mr Humphries has been playing.

On the one hand, I agree with Mr Humphries that we must do what we can to protect legal aid generally. It is certainly important that ACT citizens have access to legal aid and that it can provide advice on both ACT and Federal matters. But it is also critical that the Federal Government adequately fund its share of that process, and that is the battle that Mr Humphries has been having with the Federal Attorney-General. In fact, I listened to the Federal Attorney-General just last week when he was speaking to Elizabeth Jackson. He made the most appalling replies, the most pathetic responses, to the questions asked.

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