Page 2934 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 30 June 2010
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The prospect of some early advice, the prospect of an early intervention, may enable people to resolve a problem without it becoming a legal dispute or may avoid them spending a whole lot of time caught up in saying it clearly is a legal dispute. And I think that general issue of “do I have a legal problem or not?” is one that is perhaps less understood but is a significant issue for many people in our community.
This point brings me to community legal centres. The community legal centres are an important part of the legal structure in Australia. They provide a role of access to justice that is fundamentally important and provide a pivotal role in providing assistance to those who would otherwise go without advice.
The intent of our motion is to urge the government to support the five community legal centres currently operating in the ACT. Community legal centres provide an invaluable service to those people in legal need and, as with most in the community sector, they really do run on the smell of an oily rag and provide tremendous benefits to the community.
I would like to turn to the practical actions we think the government needs to take and that we have included in the text of our motion. Firstly, we think that community legal centres represent an incredible investment option for government, with research showing that every one dollar spent in a community legal centre can save $100 at later points in the justice system. Community legal centres act in a preventative way that educates people about their rights and reduces their reliance on the courts and lawyers to resolve disputes, the point I was making earlier.
However, community legal centres are facing an accommodation problem in the ACT. It is forcing them to turn away offers of pro bono assistance and to operate at reduced capacity. And by “reduced capacity” I mean they are less able to offer legal advice and assistance for those people who are falling through the cracks, who cannot afford a private lawyer and who do not qualify for legal aid. And this is happening every single day. This is not some problem that is somewhere out in the future. This is happening right now.
In the paper that the Greens issued, which we have discussed in this chamber before, on community legal centres and access to justice, we provided some case studies of the sort of people we are talking about who desperately need help at a time in their lives when they are perhaps facing the biggest crisis they have ever known. Not being able to access a lawyer simply makes that problem so much worse. So helping community legal centres with the problems of accommodation is a very practical way the government can act to close the gap on unmet legal need.
I should acknowledge that the government have taken practical steps in the last month or two. We are told they have arranged and paid for a small amount of renovation work at Havelock House that now means the Street Law program can offer a work desk to its volunteer solicitors. This was welcome but very much needed assistance. It shows that the government can act on this issue. Our motion calls for more of the same approach.
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