Law Council President's Message - September 2024
13 September 2024
Access to Justice for All
In late July we launched our Access to Justice for All Campaign. This is a national campaign run in collaboration with all our Constituent Bodies seeking a commitment from Commonwealth and State and Territory governments to adequately resource our legal assistance sector.
Our legal assistance sector helps those in our community experiencing significant vulnerability, hardship and need. People turn to them for assistance with a range of issues including employment, health, safety, income and housing.
Governments, Commonwealth and states and territories, fund these vital services through a cooperative agreement known as the National Legal Assistance Partnership (NLAP). However, funding under this partnership has failed to keep pace with needs and demands for more than a decade.
This has led to services being forced to turn away potential clients, set means testing to levels many households will not be eligible to meet, and shrink service footprints in rural, regional and remote parts of the country.
Therefore, we were pleased earlier this month to hear that a Heads of Agreement has been signed for a new National Access to Justice Partnership that will include uplift of almost $800 million in funding over five years from 2025-26 to the legal assistance sector, with a focus on legal services responding to gender-based violence, including First Nations-specific services. This includes indexation and funding to support pay parity.
The commitment to a new Agreement commencing in the next financial year, will provide much‑needed certainty to legal assistance services in the sector,
The additional funding of nearly $800 million over five years represents a substantial increase on previous years and will go some way to addressing key recommendations arising from Dr Warren Mundy’s recent independent review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership
However, it falls well short of the amounts recommended. We strongly encourage the Commonwealth to continue to work with its State and Territory counterparts to build on this momentum and ensure that each of Dr Mundy’s recommendations are implemented in full.
More is required to address key areas of identified unmet need within the legal assistance sector. This includes, for example, increased resourcing of legal aid commissions to expand current means testing arrangements and increased grants of legal aid to facilitate legal representation for some of our most marginalised members of society, especially in rural, regional and remote areas of the country.
Over 70 per cent of legal aid approved matters are assigned to private practitioners. However, it is becoming increasingly unviable for the private profession to offer support to legal aid clients under current conditions. This leaves many individuals without the legal help they require to navigate complex legal systems such as family law disputes.
These are issues that can only be addressed through continued financial investment from governments, building on this latest announcement.
While we await the details on how additional funding will be allocated, there are currently critical unmet legal needs across multiple areas—including for example, employment law, consumer law, government decision‑making, social security, elder abuse, and criminal law.
The Heads of Agreement outlined is certainly a positive step for access to justice in Australia. However, the job is far from done. Commonwealth, State and Territory governments must all work together to further recognise the critical role the legal assistance sector plays in Australia, and the significant benefits for all Australians, both financially and socially, from government investment in these services.
The Law Council continues to invite members and friends of the legal profession to support our campaign to properly fund legal assistance for some of our most marginalised communities.
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Youth Justice
Since my last column, a small number of states and territories have indicated they will not be lifting the minimum age of criminal responsibility to 14 and are even considering setting it back to 10 years of age.
Last month, the Law Council partnered with Australia’s peak medical body, the Australian Medical Association, to make a public statement regarding minimum age of criminal responsibility.
In this statement, we welcomed the findings and recommendations of an Australian Human Rights Commission report into Youth Justice, which include raising the minimum age of criminal responsibility from 10 to 14 years.
The report echoes a joint statement in 2019 from the Australian Medical Association and the Law Council of Australia demanding action on the “national tragedy” of jailing children as young as 10.
The AMA and the Law Council submissions during consultation on the report called for the minimum age of criminal responsibility to be raised to 14 years in all jurisdictions, and for better justice reinvestment and support for community-led diversion and support programs for young people which in turn improves community safety.
Parliamentary Committee Submissions
Over the last quarter, the Law Council has made submissions on topics ranging from justice system responses to sexual violence, through to protecting Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights and the ACCC immunity and cooperation policy for cartel conduct.
We appeared before the Environment and Communications Legislation Committee to give evidence regarding our concerns with the Nature Positive (Environment Protection Australia) Bill 2024 and related Bills. The deficiencies we have identified are particularly disappointing as the Nature Positive reforms are a once-in-a-generation opportunity to correct serious shortcomings in Australia’s environmental protection framework.
We also gave evidence before the Senate Education and Employment Committee that the Education Services for Overseas Students Amendment (Quality and Integrity) Bill 2024 needs further revision if it is to effectively achieve its specified goals. Our concerns centre on the risk these amendments pose to Australia’s attractiveness as a study destination of choice for international students.
Additions to courts and tribunals
It has been a pleasure to be able to welcome a substantial number of new judges and members to our courts and tribunals over the past three months. It is great to see the capacity of these important foundations of our justice system being bolstered.
Young Environmental Lawyer of the Year
It was pleasing to see that the 2024 Mahla Pearlman Australian Young Lawyer of the Year went to Sydney based Lawyer, David Hertzberg
Over the last few years, David has run a number of cases in the Federal and High Courts which have had a significant impact on different aspects of climate change policy in Australia. This impact made David a standout in a very strong field of nominations this year.
Last Updated on 11/10/2024
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