Mark Dreyfus (Isaacs, Australian Labor Party, Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wills for his question. The Prime Minister's announcement, following a National Cabinet meeting on Friday, was very significant, demonstrating the commitment of the Albanese Labor government to ending violence against women and children in a generation. As the Prime Minister said on Friday, the $4.7 billion package includes $3.9 billion for the five-year National Access to Justice Partnership, and that includes an $800 million increase on current funding levels for the legal assistance sector plus—and this is very significant—a commitment to ongoing funding.

Every part of the legal assistance sector will benefit from this $800 million boost, which will be shared between community legal centres, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, women's legal services, legal aid commissions and family violence prevention legal services. It's the biggest single investment in the legal assistance sector ever by the Commonwealth. This package will provide pay parity for the community legal centre sector so that lawyers and other workers in community legal centres, Aboriginal legal services, women's legal services and FVPLSs—themselves mostly women because most of the workers in this sector are women—will no longer have to accept being paid up to 30 per cent less than their counterparts in legal aid commissions.

Legal assistance providers such as the Northern Community Legal Centre, which serves the electorate of Wills, are on the frontline of the fight to end gender based violence, but community legal centres, including women's legal centres, are currently turning away up to 1,000 people per day. This investment in legal assistance will ensure that those services can help more Australians. This investment in legal assistance services will ensure that these services can help more women, including First Nations women, safely leave and recover from violent relationships.

By providing ongoing funding to the sector, we help end the destructive uncertainty created by the former government. Now legal services can hire new staff, take up new premises and plan with confidence for the future. The Liberals oversaw a decade of chronic underfunding—

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