What is the legal sector doing to address this issue?

The Law Council, along with its constituent bodies, has long-argued the need for an increase in funding for Australia's legal assistance sector. We are undertaking a number of initiatives aimed at achieving this goal.

Activities Undertaken

In mid-2009 a PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) Report entitled ‘Legal Aid Funding: Current Challenges and the Opportunities of Cooperative Federalism' was commissioned by the Law Council of Australia, the Law Institute of Victoria, the Victorian Bar and the Australian Bar Association.

Since the commissioning and subsequent release of this report, significant lobbying work regarding improved legal aid funding has been undertaken by representatives from the Law Council, the Australian Bar Association, the Law Institute of Victoria and the Victorian Bar with key identified stakeholders including Ministers and Members of the Expenditure Review Committee (ERC). The agenda of these meetings focused on the forthcoming Budget and, in particular, the following issues:

  • concerns were expressed regarding the projected reductions in Commonwealth contributions to legal aid commissions - in particular in the 2009 - 2010 Budget, the Commonwealth contribution to legal aid commissions appears to have dropped from $178 million to $168 million.
  • Ministers were advised that an additional $43m is required to return to 1997 per capita funding levels, and $220m is required if the Commonwealth were to return to a 50 per cent share as in 1997 (as opposed to its current 32 per cent). It was pointed out that these figures illustrated the extent of the cost shifting by the Commonwealth following the 1997 cuts.

The PWC report has been circulated to a broad cross-section of Parliamentarians and Senators, calling on the Federal Government to take a leadership role in the joint provision of legal aid. Expressly, the reports' commissioning parties called for:

the current Federal Government to apply the principles of "cooperative federalism" to legal aid - that is the Commonwealth should partner with states and territories in the provision of legal aid to those in need without regard to the arbitrary Commonwealth/state divisions of responsibility. The joint objective would be to ensure that vulnerable Australians would receive legal aid to protect the rights afforded to them under international instruments and under the national policy of social inclusion.

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Index

Legal Aid Matters
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