Page 2933 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010
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(a) implementing a CLCs office accommodation strategy that:
(i) in the short term prior to the 2011-12 budget enables all existing funded staff positions to be given a work desk and offers of pro bono assistance to be accepted; and
(ii) caters for future staffing and office requirements of CLCs in the long term; and
(b) during the 2011-12 financial year, use the results of the Survey of Legal Needs in Australia to:
(i) quantify unmet legal need in the ACT; and
(ii) develop a funding plan to help close the gap.
I am pleased to bring on this motion for debate today. It calls on the government to take a series of practical steps to improve access to justice in the ACT. The government had their own plans for improving access to justice, with the creation of a district court. What the government are addressing with their proposal is court waiting times, which is one aspect of a just society. People are waiting too long to get their case heard in court, and that does reduce access to justice. There is an old adage that covers this work, and that is that justice delayed is justice denied.
The Greens’ motion today addresses a separate aspect of access to justice, which is the ability to speak to a lawyer. Central to our system of dispute resolution is the ability to have a dispute resolved by an independent court. Following directly on from this is the importance of having access to the advice of a lawyer. As the rules of court and the pre-court procedures are becoming increasingly complex, the role of the lawyer has become more and more important.
So at one level our motion goes to the heart of the ACT’s performance as a modern democratic society. The ability to speak to a lawyer is a fundamental measure of democracy. On another more practical and tangible level, the motion identifies steps the government can take to improve our performance. Access to legal assistance is, as my motion says, the cornerstone of a modern democratic society.
Lawyers are central to our system of democracy but they do not come cheap. It is an unfortunate fact that not everyone can afford a lawyer, and the government lawyers put in place to provide free assistance cannot help everybody. People are falling through the cracks because they cannot afford a lawyer or they do not qualify for legal aid or perhaps both. There are serious and negative consequences for people who go without a lawyer when they need one.
As I have noted in the text of the motion, unmet legal need occurs when people cannot secure the assistance of a lawyer, and the negative impacts of unmet legal need include, specifically, people being forced to represent themselves in court and generally a lack of awareness of rights and how they might be enforced. And I think that second point is an interesting one. Often people are unsure whether they even have a legal problem or not.
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