Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Southern Communities Advocacy Legal Education Service, or SCALES as it is better known, is a much needed, heavily relied on community legal centre which provides legal services predominantly to the Rockingham and Kwinana communities in my beautiful electorate of Brand in Western Australia. SCALES also assists many people living outside of these areas if they are in need. The only centre of its kind in Western Australia, this independent not-for-profit community legal centre is also the site of the Murdoch University Law School Clinic. This clinic provides invaluable clinical education programs which assist not only the participating students but the clients of the centre who receive legal services from supervised final-year law students.

Since April 1997, SCALES has been providing free legal services to low-income and disadvantaged people, and demand for its services is increasing all the time. Without SCALES, many local people would not be able to access the legal services that they need. Last year alone, SCALES provided legal services to 741 people and provided a further 1,500 people with information and referrals. They had to turn away hundreds of people due to a lack of resources. Like so many community legal centres across the country, SCALES is set to lose 30 per cent of its funding from 1 July this year, thanks to the devastating and deplorable cuts by Attorney-General George Brandis and the Turnbull government.

Shortly after its 20th anniversary of delivering quality legal support to those in need, instead of celebrating this massive achievement and it being a steadfast community institution, SCALES will face a massive threat to its future because of these crippling cuts. I know how hard managing director, Gai Walker, and the dedicated team of solicitors and support staff work to best assist some of the most vulnerable people in the community of Brand. I know SCALES does its best to help clients dealing with serious matters, including Centrelink debts—and we know we are getting a lot more of those and half of them are fake—tenancy disputes and employment issues. Gai and her team have told me about the increase in the complexity and, sadly, the urgency and danger in their clients' cases. They have clients who face having their children taken into care, clients facing homelessness and clients hurting from domestic violence situations.

It might concern the Attorney-General—then again, it might not—in light of his commitment to slash this centre's funding, that 40 per cent of clients presenting at SCALES have domestic violence as part of their legal issue. This is a centre staffed by dedicated people dealing with domestic violence issues daily, which for three years running has seen more and more funding cuts to its essential services to the community. I struggle to see how this government can justify these cuts in the face of its National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children. I call on the government to actually look at the impact that slashing 30 per cent of this great community legal centre will have on those who are in desperate need of its support. If anything, with the handing down of the Fair Work Commission's decision to slash the penalty rates of some of the lowest paid workers in the community, demand on community legal centres such as SCALES in Rockingham will grow even more. It is a fact that reducing penalty rates, which the Turnbull government today has supported, will have a greater negative impact on women. Women are more likely to rely on penalty rates to meet household expenses and, sadly, women are more likely to need the services of community legal centres to help them with issues, particularly domestic violence.

People taking home less money in their pay packets, which is what the cuts to penalty rates means, will put increasing strain on household budgets. It is not hard, then, to see how families will suffer from financial stresses, will struggle to pay the rent or the mortgage, will have to engage with Centrelink and will face employment issues. An increase in the number of low-income people in the community will again increase the numbers of potential clients in need of community legal centre services. With even less funding, centres like SCALES will be unable to assist them. These centres are already running at capacity and will have to deal with even more demand with a third of their funding gone. Last year alone, 10 per cent of SCALES' clients were living with disability, six per cent were of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent and 65 per cent were women. Without SCALES, without the community legal centres across the country, these people will be further disadvantaged by the government's cruel cuts to these much needed services. The Attorney-General might consider getting out in the community a bit more and visiting community legal centres such as SCALES, but we know he does not do that too often. He might pop down to Rockingham and have a chat to Gai Walker and her staff. Then he might see more of the desperately important and challenging work that they do. I hope he might be convinced to stop cutting important services to those in our community who need help the most. Sadly, it is unlikely and it is, in a word, deplorable.