Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

That begs this question, then: are these the neediest cases? Because, indeed, as the submission from Victoria Legal Aid points out, these proceedings are a Commonwealth priority under the national partnership agreement on legal aid funding and, as a result, commissions would be required to actually give priority to those at the expense, potentially, of many other citizens in the country who are seeking to do something in the family court or in relation to other minor criminal matters. The question that I have is this: is this the best use of legal aid funding and to what extent has the government taken into account the fact that money is being required to be used for these sorts of proceedings, when in fact the money would potentially be available from the restrained assets that are there, which will mean that that money is not available for others?

In asking you to respond to that question, I would also say that the suggestion that some of these matters will be lengthy and that there will be a long lag time and potentially a cost-flow issue, if you like, for legal aid commissions to be able to recover any costs that they can recover comes from the submission from Victoria Legal Aid. Indeed, the government has recently announced $11 million of extra funding for litigation specialists tasked with conducting confiscation proceedings such as these and for forensic accountants, which indicates the complexity of these sorts of cases and how it is not hard to imagine that someone defending themselves to explain where their wealth came from may indeed need significant resources devoted to them from the legal assistance sector to be able to have recourse to that kind of forensic accounting and legal expertise as well. These are going to be expensive cases and it will be legal aid commissions that are required to fund them, because they are a priority matter for the Commonwealth under the partnership agreement. What are going to be the implications for those needier people that you would suggest should be prioritised?