Bridget Archer (Bass, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the critical work that's undertaken across the country by community legal centres and the urgent need to address desperate funding shortfalls. There are 166 organisations across the country in the community legal centre membership, working in communities across the country and providing free information, resources, assistance and representation to avoid and resolve legal problems. These organisations receive funding through the National Legal Assistance Partnership, NLAP. The current agreement expires in less than a year, and negotiations between the Commonwealth, states and territories are now taking place.

The sector is urgently calling on all parties to commit to both urgent funding this year and increased base funding ongoing. Centres are experiencing increasing demand for services, seeing hundreds of thousands of people each year, but as Tim Leach of Community Legal Centres Australia said at an event in parliament this week, 'We are having to turn away double the number of people we're able to see, and that is a national crisis.'

These services are on the frontline in our communities, dealing with issues such as family violence, family law, financial security, safe and secure housing, and discrimination. They deliver an invaluable service to some of the most vulnerable people in our community, but they operate beyond the limits of their capacity. I frequently hear from constituents who are unable to access support because the services are overloaded.

Despite the challenges, centres have tried to innovate and introduce services to provide education and other programs. In April 2011, in my community, the Launceston Community Legal Centre launched an innovative program to improve legal literacy in the community. The Legal Literacy Volunteer Program trains volunteers to provide regular outreach support in accessible community settings like neighbourhood houses, with the aim of helping people resolve non-legal issues like completing forms required by Centrelink and other government agencies, and reading and understanding documents. This relieves some of the pressure on the legal service provision by helping with straightforward tasks which might otherwise fall to one of the centre's lawyers. It also helps people resolve problems early, often before circumstances can escalate or worsen, thereby avoiding the need for legal support in the future.

Women's Legal Service also recognises this challenge in noting the benefits of health justice partnerships, saying:

… One in five of the most disadvantaged in our community take no action in response to their legal problems for a range of reasons including stress, time, cost, fear or not realising it is a legal problem …

Living in regional and remote areas is also a barrier. When people do seek help, they are more likely to ask a trusted non-legal professional such as a health or community service provider, leading women's legal and legal aid to embed free legal help into health and social service settings, such as child and family centres, with the aim of reducing family violence for Tasmanians.

The Legal Literacy Volunteer Program is evidence based. Importantly, volunteers collect data as part of the reporting processes, which provide necessary information for analysing community needs and measuring the effectiveness of the program. The program has been extremely successful, but the centre faced an ongoing funding issues challenge through the COVID-19 pandemic. The program, which is not funded under the NLAP agreement, lost state funding for 18 months, resulting in positions being lost and a lot of time and work to re-establish the program. Having now re-established the program, the centre has highlighted it during the recent NLAP review as a cost-effective model of legal problem prevention and early intervention. The centre hopes the NLAP review will result in increased base level funding so that centres can operate innovative programs like this.

These sorts of programs should be encouraged and amplified right across the country, but that is simply not possible without additional ongoing reliable funding. Investing in the core services offered by community legal services is vital to ensure workforce stabilisation and to meet community demand. As the sector has stated, the Commonwealth government has a responsibility to provide community legal centres with consistent guaranteed baseline funding. People in communities experiencing disadvantage deserve to feel certain that the holistic trauma informed services they rely on will be accessible when and where they need them, now and into the future. I call on the government to urgently turn its attention to this crisis and commit to increasing support for this vital service.