Tim Hammond (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before we reconvened in this place, over summer I had the great privilege of meeting with consumer credit community legal centres all across the country. I was incredibly impressed and struck by the work they do to help consumers, particularly vulnerable consumers, to navigate their way through complaints processes in often-complex financial arrangements. The work that community legal centres in general do is vital, not just work in the consumer space but work to support local communities and my constituents in the areas of family law, including family violence prevention; employment law; welfare law; and housing and tenancy law.

Community legal centres principally exist to provide legal services to those on very low incomes. Around 80 per cent of clients have an income lower than $26,000. Without community legal centres providing free or cheap advice to people with a problem, we would see the courts being clogged with more self-represented litigants. This would present us with a significant problem. It would inevitably mean more cases go to trial, as self-represented litigants often do not have access to the legal advice they require to inform decisions about pretrial settlements. It would have an impact on court resources but also, very importantly, it would be an enormous cost to governments at every level. Without community legal centres, more of our most vulnerable citizens would be seeking to access legal aid, which is already bursting at the seams through overstretched capacity.

In 2014 the Productivity Commission released a report on access to justice which recommended an immediate $200 million increase in funding to the legal assistance sector. What has happened instead, though, is that the Attorney-General's National Partnership Agreement on Legal Assistance Services has reduced Commonwealth funding by 30 per cent, starting on 1 July. In my electorate, this is exacerbated by significant year-on-year cuts from the Barnett Liberal government.

What does this look like on the ground?    The landscape is harsh and stark, with community legal centres having to terminate employment of a full-time solicitor, sometimes in cases where they only have one full-time and one part-time solicitor. Community legal centres are no longer able to provide wrap-around services such as referrals to financial counsellors. Worst of all, community legal centres are having to turn people away or reduce their opening hours.    One in my electorate went from providing a phone line 4½ days a week to providing it three days a week, denying consumers the legal advice that they vitally need. This situation simply cannot continue. The system is in stress and crisis already, and these cuts will send it spiralling further downward. These centres run on the smell of an oily rag, and they do an amazing amount of good, with what little they have, to protect our most vulnerable citizens. The cuts must stop now.