Lidia Thorpe (Victoria, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

The need for the Australian Government to urgently fund the $215.3m funding shortfall for legal assistance services for the 2024-2025 fiscal period, as per Dr. Warren Mundy's Independent Review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership 2020-2025 (NLAP).

Thank you to Senator Paterson for allowing me to do this.

Legal assistance services are so crucial. They provide life-saving support for women and children trying to escape family violence. They help Aboriginal mothers whose children are targeted for removal. They help marginalised people who have been targeted by police They help children to break from cycles of incarceration. These services are on the front line, helping the most vulnerable people, but, due to years of neglect from successive governments, these services are crumbling, overstretched and unable to do their jobs. Over 52,000 women were turned away from life-saving legal services last year. That number is growing, and Aboriginal women suffer the most. We are 45 times more likely to experience family violence and at least 25 times more likely to be killed or injured by a former or intimate partner.

At the start of March, the Attorney-General received an independent review into the dire strait of the sector. When Dreyfus received the report, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services were calling for it to be released so they could discuss the recommendations with the government. But the Attorney-General refused to be open or honest with the sector. He even refused my order to produce documents that had majority support in this chamber. The government were doing all they could to keep the report from the sector until after the May budget so they wouldn't come under scrutiny or pressure to fund these essential services. So much for working openly and in partnership with First Peoples!

When we finally saw the report, after the budget, we found out it contained $215 million worth of recommendations for this year to keep legal services afloat. But Labor only gave $41 million to the sector in their budget, leaving the sector shortchanged by $174 million. Still, today, the Attorney-General hasn't given a formal response to those recommendations. Instead, he has just ignored them. So the sector has been kept in the dark and left critically underfunded.

To make it worse, the government had this report at the same time that the National Cabinet convened for their emergency meeting about family violence. What a joke! But the report wasn't fed into the process. They hid it, despite it having clear recommendations about family violence prevention. This whole saga has demonstrated shocking neglect, secrecy and a lack of goodwill from the Labor government. We've seen again how far Labor will go to avoid scrutiny and accountability and to shut out First Peoples. Shame!

That brings us to this week. We've heard that Dreyfus and the state A-Gs are expected to meet on Friday morning here to finally discuss this report together for the first time. They've been trying to keep this meeting secret, too. It beggars belief that they've waited for four months to have a meeting on this issue given how urgent it is and that people's lives are at risk. This is the opportunity they have to make up for their shocking neglect and bad-faith actions and offer the life-saving help that is so desperately needed.

The government must understand the gravity of their failure to properly fund legal services. There is a direct connection between underfunding and increased risks of harm, trauma and loss of life on Labor's watch. It will have impacts on health care, housing, child protection and incarceration. Women turned away from legal services are often turned back into violent situations. Thirty-nine women have been killed violently already this year. The government can't continue to underfund this sector and keep a clear conscience. They have had to turn that around this week. So, Labor, if you are fair dinkum about preventing violence against women in this country, stop sitting on your hands and fund these underfunded services that will actually save people's lives.