Page 1594 - Week 05 - Thursday, 15 May 2014
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MR CORBELL: As I have outlined, there are a range of impacts as a result of these cuts. We know that engaging Indigenous people in these service provision areas, in legal aid for Indigenous clients, is critical. It empowers Indigenous people to feel confident that their problems and their stories are going to be well understood when they approach legal aid. It encourages them to engage with the legal system and it encourages them to seek help early.
The clear advice from the reviews that have now been conducted nationwide into community legal services is that the early intervention pays dividends and stops problems becoming more serious, more complex and taking up more time in our courts and tribunals, often to the detriment of those who end up in those proceedings. So it is very important that we make these investments, but we are not seeing any support at all from the federal government when it comes to support for community legal aid services.
We have seen this cut to legal aid bureaus nationally in the budget on Tuesday. We saw last year the arbitrary removal of funding to community legal services like the environmental defenders offices. So this is unfortunately part of a pattern from a Liberal government that does not care, that is not interested in legal support services, that is not interested in helping the poor and the vulnerable, that is not interested in helping the battlers in our community who deserve these levels of support and legal representation wherever possible.
MADAM SPEAKER: A supplementary question, Ms Berry.
MS BERRY: Minister, how do these cuts by the commonwealth contrast with the ACT government’s strong support for legal assistance in the territory?
MR CORBELL: I thank Ms Berry for the supplementary. They contrast markedly, because at a time when we see a reduction in funding from the federal government, the defunding of certain community legal aid centres, and the big cuts in representation that would otherwise be available to the vulnerable in our community in our legal aid services, this government is making new and additional investments to help these services.
We have instituted a range of initiatives over the past few years to address support for community legal aid services. For example, we have provided funding to the Welfare Rights and Legal Centre to firstly establish and then maintain the street law program. Street law assists some of the most disadvantaged in our community by providing free legal services and advice to those who are homeless or at risk of being homeless. Heaven knows what Tony Abbott would have thought of that if he could have defunded that program, because he seems to be pretty happy to defund others. Alongside direct legal services to the homeless, street law is providing access for homeless people to other legal services.
The government has, of course, committed in the last ACT budget $1.05 million over four years for the development of the community legal centre hub, which is now co-locating with the Welfare Rights and Legal Centre, the Women's Legal Centre and the
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