Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service suspension despite huge funding boost

Legal insiders are outraged the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service closed down its court services in Innisfail and Atherton at the same time it received more than $30m in extra funding.

The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service in Cairns is under fire for cutting services just after it gave a pay rise to its lawyers who are now said to be earning more than their private sector counterparts in some instances.

Legal insiders are outraged that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service closed down its court services in Innisfail and Atherton at the same time it received more than $30m in extra funding from the state and federal governments in this year’s budget.

The service cut came just before ATSILS gave most of its 250 staff members in Queensland a significant pay rise.

ATSILS said it cut the services in April and gave more 50% of $30m in new funding to staff in July, but aims to re-commence the services in by the end of this month.

However, according to legal insiders, the staff upgrade could mean their staff are now paid more than private sector staff.

“Private firms tend to pay junior lawyers between $70 to $75,000, junior lawyers are often being paid up to $90,000 at ATSILS,” an industry source revealed.

ATSILS has put out a statement acknowledging the service suspensions saying, “Cairns remains our greatest challenge due to a combination of factors.”

In the same statement it acknowledged it had received additional funding.

Existing free legal services now having increased pressure since ATSILS cut its service at the Atherton Courthouse. PHOTO: Mark Murray

As a result of the service cut, since April there have been no ATSILS lawyers available for defendants at Innisfail or Atherton on the day of court or otherwise.

ATSILS have also reduced their representation of clients in the Supreme and District Courts in Cairns – with those cases now being managed by Legal Aid Queensland.

Services in Mareeba have also been reduced.

In May, the Federal Government provided $21m in “one-off additional funding to ATSILS” to top up “over $440m over five years under the National Legal Assistance Partnership that is dedicated to ATSILS”.

Queensland received $5.8m of that $21m, bringing it to a total of $142.912m of Commonwealth and Queensland Government funding over 2020-25 to ATSILS Queensland.

This includes when the State Government also provided an additional $9.165m in funding in June.

Upon receiving the state government funding ATSILS in the statement said: “The additional funds will be used to increase service delivery capacity and to implement a more competitive salary structure across every position”.

When approached for comment an ATSILS spokesman said about 50% of the new money received went on bolstering staff salaries “to bring them in-line with salaries from Legal Aid”.

The rest of the money will be used to employ more lawyers.

He said the reason the services were cut was because they were unable to recruit lawyers for those postions.

“Temporary service suspensions were put in place to help address Workplace Health and Safety concerns – due to the overwhelming workloads that were being placed upon our Cairns’ office criminal law team; as well as out of our ethical obligations to ensure continuity of professional service levels,” the spokesman said.

He said prior to the suspension being put in place, “our Cairns office had the highest case load of any of our 25 offices with over 1000 duty lawyer and hearing court clients per year per criminal law lawyer”.

The Mareeba Police Station and Watch House on the Atherton Tablelands. Picture: Brendan Radke

Innisfail and Mareeba are known for being busy courts with high workloads.

ATSILS’ absence is leading to higher case loads to existing government legal services or pro bono services offered by private firms who say they have “less money to work with than ATSILS do” and regard ATSILS as “very well-resourced”.

ATSILS is also calling for more money, saying the federal government needs “to deliver a $250m emergency support package to prevent imminent service freezes and to continue to provide culturally safe frontline services including advocacy to address the alarming incarceration rates of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people”.

One legal insider says many of the indigenous Lotus Glen Correctional centre are on there be Pic Annette Dew

“It’s a disgrace. A complete and utter joke,” a legal industry sorce said.

“And it’s the clients who are suffering.”

A spokesperson for the Queensland Attoney-General Department said: “While ATSILS receives funding, it is not explicitly for the delivery of services in Mareeba or Atherton.”

ATSILS said it hoped to lift some of the temporary service suspensions out of the Cairns office by the end of this month.

Originally published as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service suspension despite huge funding boost