George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I would also like to make a few observations on the Access to Justice report. Unlike the other report under consideration—into the judicial system—which is about structures, access to justice is, in the end, about resources; it is about money. There are two observations I want to make following Senator Barnett’s contribution. First of all, anyone who works in the Australian legal system knows that the legal aid system is in the worst crisis it has ever been in right now—right now. And, as answers that were given to me in Senate estimates last year revealed, there has been a reduction in Commonwealth funding through the state and territory legal aid commissions, through which the Commonwealth supports the provision of state and territory legal aid. At the same time—and this is really the point that Senator Barnett was trying to illuminate—there has been a blow-out in the Commonwealth expenditure on the acquisition of Commonwealth legal services by the Commonwealth government and Commonwealth agencies. It seems to me that if ever you wanted an example of a grievous resource misallocation it is that the people who are most needful of access to justice are having Commonwealth support for legal aid withdrawn at the same time as the Commonwealth’s expenditure on its own procurement of legal services through the Commonwealth government and its agencies is expanding at an extravagant rate. The priorities are all wrong.

As a person who practised at the bar for 14 years and practised at various times at all levels, including early in my career in the magistrates court, I feel very strongly about the issue of access to justice. It is a fundamental right. When you have a system access to which and outcomes from which depend importantly on the capacity to be represented by those trained in the law and trained in the system, access to justice for lawyers is what access to doctors is for the health sector. It is a disgrace that the resource allocation and the priorities of the Rudd government, as this report highlights, have devalued access to justice. It is not even a social justice issue; it is a functional issue. If people cannot be represented by competent professionals, then they cannot avail themselves of justice through the courts. It is as simple as that.

Let me illustrate my concerns with an anecdote. Last year I was visited by some people—I will not say who they were, it was a private conversation, but people representing the legal aid sector—and they explained to me the crisis that has befallen access to justice in this country at the moment. I said, ‘What, in terms of the increase in the allocation of Commonwealth funding, would it take to fix the system?’ This particular gentleman said to me: ‘An extra $180 million per annum would probably fix it, but it would be a close run thing. If you invested an extra $250 million per annum in the system then we could restore a reasonable level of Commonwealth funding to facilitate access to justice.’ I paused and I looked at this particular gentleman, and I said to him, ‘Do you realise that the Commonwealth government has just announced that it is going to spend 12 times that much money on pink installation batts?’ That is why I say it is a resource allocation issue.