Aboriginal Legal Services to scale back work nationally amid funding crisis

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Aboriginal Legal Services across Australia are on the “brink of collapse” and will be forced to cut services within four weeks as they grapple with a nationwide lack of funding.

In a rare public statement, Aboriginal Legal Services in NSW, ACT, Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Queensland, the Northern Territory and Tasmania joined on Monday to call for an extra $250 million, which they say is urgently needed to prevent service cuts being put into place.

The Aboriginal flag flying over Parliament House in Canberra.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Such freezes would differ for each state, but would include the inability to represent new clients in certain courts in regional Australia.

Each state-based legal service represents Indigenous clients at court, including in criminal cases, family law and children’s care and protection matters, as well as representing families at inquests and engaging in community work and law reform.

The agencies also operate each state’s custody notification service, which requires police to inform the legal service that a person identifying as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander has been taken into custody.

Karly Warner, head of the national peak body for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, said staff were “at the brink of collapse” and the situation was a “justice system emergency for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.

The federal government has known about our slide into crisis for some time.

She said the agencies had been increasing the services they offered, but had not received a boost in their funding, and required a drastic injection of funds to continue operating at their current level.

“The federal government has known about our slide into crisis for some time. They appear to be willing to let our services either collapse or turn people away,” Warner said.

“We are giving advance warning to our communities that without immediate intervention from the federal government we will need to reduce services within the next four weeks. We are currently drawing up plans to reduce workload of burnt out staff whilst having the minimum impact on service delivery possible.

“We are committed to doing everything we can to support our communities but there’s no point in sugar-coating it – this is an extremely dire situation. This crisis can only be averted with immediate emergency funding.”

Lawyers fear the freeze in services will prove disastrous for clients, who could be at increased risk of having their children removed or being incarcerated without specialist legal support.

If no funding is provided, it is understood the NSW Aboriginal Legal Service will freeze services from next month at twelve regional courts: Junee, Eden, Moss Vale, Singleton, Wauchope, West Wyalong, Tenterfield, Temora, Muswellbrook, Lithgow, Forster and Byron Bay.

The freeze would mean current clients continue to be represented, but new clients – such as those who have been very recently arrested – cannot be accommodated.

Warner, who is also chief executive of the NSW/ACT Aboriginal Legal Service, said the federal government is committed to listening to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voices, “and we need them to listen right now”.

Of the $250 million sought, $196 million would be needed to simply maintain the current level of service in each state and prevent service freezes. The additional $54 million would be used to fill in service gaps where lawyers are currently unable to reach clients.

In its statement, the group of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services said demand for services had risen dramatically since 2018, but over the same time Commonwealth funding had declined in real terms.

The group said service freezes will have “dire consequences” for people who rely on them to have any chance of equal access to justice.

“Service freezes risk disastrous outcomes including increased family violence and child removal,
unjust incarceration and deaths in custody,” the group said.

“The difficult decision to freeze services will be devastating for our organisations because it means real people who deserve culturally appropriate legal representation are turned away and suffer unnecessarily through the justice system.

“This funding crisis has been building for some time because successive parliaments have not prioritised culturally safe services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.”

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