Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It has been a pleasure to hear from the minister about the funding commitments that have been made and the cuts that have been made. There are a number of questions that arise but I would like to start with a very important issue—that is, the effect of the Abbott government funding cuts on access to justice in this country.

Access to justice is a significant concern for this country. It has been the subject of a number of inquiries and considerations, including most recently a draft report from the Productivity Commission in respect of access to justice, in which the Productivity Commission noted that there are not incentives for lawyers in private practice to engage in systemic advocacy work but that lawyers in community legal centres are uniquely placed to undertake advocacy work in respect of systemic issues.

Notwithstanding that the Productivity Commission has recognised the importance of policy reform advocacy work for the community as a whole—including in dealing with systemic issues and difficulties arising within the legal system—in MYEFO the Abbott government announced that it would be cutting $43.1 million from legal policy reform and advocacy funding over four years, including cuts to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services and community legal centres.

The May budget continued that cut, and there has been a great deal of concern from the community and from community legal centres in respect of the effect that is going to have on community legal centres' abilities to engage in problem solving and in advocacy more generally. That then leads to concerns about access to justice, which in turn leads to concern about the administration of justice.

Is the minister aware that the Human Rights Law Centre Executive Director, Hugh de Kretser, said that the cuts went against the recommendations of repeated parliamentary inquiries that highlighted the chronic underfunding of Aboriginal legal services?

Is the minister aware that the Australian Council of Social Services urged the federal government to take a cool approach and avoid trying to restore the budget in one hit, saying that the cuts would have little impact on the budget bottom line but a devastating impact on those who need legal assistance?

What percentage of work do community legal centres do that is defined as so-called legal policy reform and advocacy work? Can you give an example of the policy work that would be the subject of the cuts being made? The cuts to policy reform will practically mean that experts in the field will not provide information to the government; why does the Abbott government want to take away funding that would allow for policy consultation from experts?

Is the minister aware of the wage disparity between private lawyers and community legal centre lawyers? Who has been consulted in respect of the impact of these cuts on Australians in need, taking into account the fact that community legal centres often provide—with a lot of expertise and on a very slender budget as it is—services to those people who cannot afford private lawyers' fees but equally do not qualify for legal aid assistance, such as people with debt issues, people with family law issues, people suffering family violence and people who are unable to access justice.

Is the minister aware of the concerns that have been raised by the courts in respect of the burden that self-represented litigants place on the courts? Does the minister consider that there will be an increase in the number of self-represented litigants that the courts are expected to handle as a consequence of these cuts to community legal centre funding and services?

Are you aware, Minister, of the comment from the community legal centres' national campaign, Community Law Australia, that as many as one in five people turning to community legal centres for assistance is already being turned away by those community legal centres because of a lack of resourcing? Are you aware as to whether any of the community legal centres whose funding is to be cut had been visited by or on behalf of the government and consulted before these cuts were decided upon?

Is the minister aware that an independent economic cost-benefit analysis of community legal centres published by the NACLC found that, on average, community legal centres have a cost-benefit ratio of one to 18—that is, for every dollar spent by government on funding CLCs, these services return a benefit to society that is 18 times the cost. To express it in dollar terms, the $47 million spent on the CLC program nationally in 2010 would yield around $846 million in benefit to Australia. Why would the government cut services which provide such benefits to this country? Thank you.

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