Page 3634 - Week 08 - Friday, 24 August 2012
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We support the proposal from the Law Council of Australia for the commonwealth to return to funding at least 50 per cent of the legal aid commissions. Since 1997, when it funded 55 per cent, this has dropped in recent years to below 50 per cent. The Greens nationally and at state and territory levels see this as a concerning downward trend that the commonwealth needs to address. For a small jurisdiction like the ACT, even a small change in the funding allocation from the commonwealth would make a significant impact and enable more legal aid services to be provided to people in need in Canberra. That is one issue that I would encourage the attorney to prioritise during the current financial year and before the next federal budget.
Another issue I would like to discuss relates to the much anticipated survey of unmet legal need in Australia. This was a joint exercise by the legal aid commissions around Australia. It promises to deliver important information about the number of people who are slipping between the gaps and missing out on legal advice. This has had a number of planned release dates in recent years but each one has slipped. We are hopeful of seeing the results sooner rather than later.
I am sure all members in this place and probably around Australia will have anecdotal evidence of those people who come up against legal issues but cannot get access to a lawyer. A politician’s office is generally one of their ports of call, to either seek advice or suggest improvements to the law they are entangled in. This anecdotal evidence comes by way of phone calls and correspondence from constituents, and it confirms the existence of unmet legal need. But we need the results of the survey to give us the next level of information about where the particularly large gaps are and what kind of issues people cannot get advice on. It is only with this kind of evidence that we can then determine with the most precision where the best investment of the legal dollar should be.
To conclude, the legal aid budget line item is an important one, and we support it. With that said, there is more to be done to lobby the commonwealth to get it to return to funding 50 per cent of the resource needs of the legal aid commissions as a minimum.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Proposed expenditure—Part 1.25—Public Trustee for the ACT—$695,000 (net cost of outputs), totalling $695,000.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
Total appropriated to agencies—$2,512,195,000 (net cost of outputs), $1,158,691,000 (capital injection), and $489,351,000 (payments on behalf of the territory), totalling $4,160,237,000—agreed to.
Part 1.26—Treasurer’s advance—$31,300,000.
Proposed expenditure agreed to.
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