George Brandis under pressure as report points to inadequate funding for legal services

A REPORT by Allen Consulting finds that funding for legal assistance services is inadequate to meet the government’s own objectives.

Breakdown of spending.

THE Attorney-General, George Brandis, is under pressure to inject more money into legal aid and community legal centres and index future funding to ensure it keeps pace with demand, following the release of a major report on the sector.

The report, by Allen Consulting, finds that funding for legal assistance services is inadequate to meet the government’s own objectives and any efficiencies to be found would not be enough to cover the funding shortfall.

The government quietly released the report — which cost taxpayers almost $1 million — on the Attorney-General’s Department website last month.

It says the strict divide between commonwealth and state funding for legal aid commissions is problematic and the delivery of legal assistance should be better integrated with other services — with a case manager for people with complex needs to co-ordinate this and reduce overall costs.

It also calls for greater high-level direction from government about who should receive taxpayer-funded legal assistance and for what kinds of problems.

Other longer-term reform options include a statewide telephone triage system to ensure appropriate use of legal resources.

The Abbott government has made several cuts to legal assistance services since taking office. These include a $43 million cut to the sector in December, which shaved $13.4m from indigenous legal services over four years. Senator Brandis has also directed that commonwealth money be spent on frontline legal services and not on advocacy.

National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services chair Shane Duffy said representatives of indigenous legal services had been trying, unsuccessfully, to meet Senator Brandis since the election.

“We appreciate the Attorney is busy, we just thought given the big changes to the legal assistance sector in general, but specifically to us, there would have been an opportunity to brief him about any of the unintended consequences,” he said.

Mr Duffy welcomed the report’s call for more funding for civil and family law services — but not at the expense of its criminal practice.

He said NATSILS clients often had multiple problems, including child protection, family and consumer issues, and addressing those earlier would help to cut incarceration rates.

Senator Brandis said the expiry of commonwealth funding arrangements for legal aid, CLCs, NATSILS and family violence prevention legal services next June provided “an opportunity for the commonwealth, states and territories to work together, with the sector, to reform legal assistance arrangements”.

“The government is committed to protecting the most vulnerable members of our community and providing access to justice,” he said.

However, National Association of Community Legal Centres national convener Michael Smith said the money had so far come straight out of frontline services.

“The danger is ... legal centres will fall back to helping just one client at a time, which is a really inefficient way of doing it,” he said.

Legal Aid NSW chief executive Bill Grant said the report had validated the sector’s view that although some improvements could be made, on the whole legal assistance services were doing a good job.

“There’s not a lot more for governments to squeeze out of the existing resources,” he said.

Opposition legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus criticised the clandestine way in which the government had released the report.

Calling on the government to prioritise spending on legal assistance, he said legal centres were in a state of extreme uncertainty because their funding had been guaranteed only until next year.

“I do think the government needs to find money to direct to the legal assistance sector because of the overall benefit to society in providing access to justice,” he said.

“Repeatedly Australian governments have been told ... that preventive, early intervention legal advice can potentially avoid hugely costly disputes later.”

Mr Dreyfus said he believed it was time to revisit the strict divide between commonwealth and state funding for legal matters.

“It is artificial and this Allen report I think provides an opportunity for government to reconsider that division,” Mr Dreyfus said.

Greens legal affairs spokeswoman Penny Wright said the party had long called for the government to kick in more money for legal assistance, arguing that about half a million people a year missed out on essential legal services, and that was not good enough.

“There just has to be new money if we’re committed to providing genuine access to justice,” she said.

“This report must be a wake-up call to the federal government.”

She said the Greens would support sensible measures to get better bang for the government’s buck.

“However, this report is clear that even delivering every possible efficiency saving isn’t enough to meet the demand for legal assistance services,” she said.