Chris Ketter (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on two issues that are very close my heart. Our community legal centres are in a perilous state. On 1 July this year the Turnbull government will implement a harsh and damaging 30 per cent cut to community legal centres right across Australia. Since the middle of last year I have been actively campaigning for the LNP to reverse these measures. I have been to community legal centres across Queensland to hear their concerns and to share their stories. I have heard stories of survival, stories of struggle and stories of success. All thanks go to the staff and volunteers at our wonderful community legal centres. These are the people who strive to ensure that access to justice is not just the right of the privileged few.

The National Association of Community Legal Centres has said that there is significant and rising demand for legal assistance in Australia. As a result of this rising demand, the NACLC estimates that community legal centres turn away 160,000 people nationally, largely due to a lack of resources. The Productivity Commission, a body I do not normally agree with, handed down a very helpful report back in 2015 which explained to the government that the community gets $17 back in benefit for every dollar that is invested in community legal centres.

However, it is clear to me and everyone else in the sector that the Attorney-General has not heeded this advice. I have seen the dramatic number of people seeking legal advice on a very local level. My electorate office is located in Strathpine, just north of Brisbane. Just down the road from my office is one of Brisbane's biggest and busiest community legal centres. The Pine Rivers Community Legal Centre offers a free and effective service for people living in the Moreton Bay region. The service provides legal advice and information to about 5,000 people a year. Currently, without the proposed funding cut, they are unable to meet the demand as they do not have enough solicitors, even with an average of nine volunteer solicitors per week as well as four staff solicitors. Current wait times for people to receive legal advice are an astonishing four to five weeks.

Because there is such a long waiting list for appointments and a high demand for early intervention in legal matters in order to prevent escalation of legal problems, the service offers a walk-in evening once a fortnight; people can walk in the doors on a Thursday night, from about 5.45 onwards, to access a 20-minute legal advice session. Solicitors who work in the community in private practice come after their day at work to give their time. Each Thursday night the service provides advice to the 20 to 30 people who are most in need. Of these people, 57 per cent disclose their income scale as being less than $26,000 per year.

These are the people in our communities who are most in need. However, the concerns of the community legal centre have largely gone ignored by both the member for Dickson and the member for Petrie. I do hope that, in the future, both the member for Dickson and the member for Petrie can find the time to work out a solution for their local communities. This is not a service that the Moreton Bay region can afford to lose and it is not a cut that the community legal centres can afford to cop.

In my remaining time I want to talk about my recent visit to Gladstone. I was on a fact-finding mission to talk about the penalty rates cut and to meet with members of the SDA union in Gladstone who were impacted by the Fair Work Commission's unfair decision to cut Sunday penalty rates. I am indebted to the Queensland Branch Secretary of the SDA, Mr Chris Gazenbeek, for finding members to speak with me about the issue. I heard directly from those members that there was a great deal of concern and confusion in their stores upon the release of the commission's decision. People are very concerned about these cuts not necessarily just in the shorter term but also in the longer term when enterprise agreements come up for renegotiation. There is a great deal of concern that employers will seek to use the impact of the changes to the award to flow through to enterprise agreements which cover many thousands of Queensland workers, many of whom live in regional areas and are the ones who can least afford to lose any of their pay.

I also took the opportunity to travel to Mount Morgan to set up a regional office there. I met with numerous constituents in Mount Morgan. I want to give a special thank you to Leonie Lane and Frank Federick for assisting with the setting up of that regional office and ensuring that we were able to speak to many constituents. (Time expired)