Legal services have turned away dozens of clients amid a funding shortfall affecting the sector.
The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (Vals) had stopped taking new clients more than a fortnight ago, about the same time as the Northern community legal centre (CLC), based in the Melbourne suburb of Broadmeadows, stopped seeing certain clients.
The federal attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, has indicated he intends to reform the sector, and said in a speech to a legal conference in April that it would be one of “three key matters that I would be working on from week one”.
But services across the country say they are struggling with demand – driven in many cases by a huge increase in family violence cases.
Community legal centres rely on a combination of federal funding, which is implemented by state and territory governments, and on separate state and territory funding. The funding can be implemented for specific programs, for terms as short as a few months, for periods as long as five years, or can be ongoing.
The centres that spoke to Guardian Australia said concerns about funding were related not only to the amount of funding, but how unreliable it can be, with notice given only days before – or often after – previous funding has lapsed.
Many of those decisions are announced at the end of the financial year, meaning centres are in the midst of their most stressful period.
A Vals spokesperson said that while the service was not keeping a tally of those who had been turned away since new referrals were paused last month, a minimum of 20 people would typically be part of the service’s criminal list intake each week.
Those people are now not being seen, and are typically referred on to other services, some of which are similarly stretched.
The chief executive of Northern CLC, Jenni Smith, said that in mid-June the centre stopped running its “generalist” clinic, which typically saw people with less complex or urgent needs, when its waitlist ballooned out to six weeks for clients.
The clinic normally sees about 10 people a week. It is the first time it has had to be cancelled in six years, Smith said.
“People basically who might be struggling but have a house and are working, we can’t see,” she said.
“Which is just appalling.”
Some people who had been turned away may need legal assistance with criminal matters, she said, and help with cases such as appealing late notices on missed rate repayments. Much of the increase in demand had been driven by family violence cases, with about 70% of the centre’s clients identifying as victims of domestic abuse.
“This is definitely about people’s wellbeing and quality of life, but we have to keep cutting the line further and further,” Smith said.
“We currently have eight lawyers to service a catchment of 490,000. So what do you do?”
In Dubbo, where the western NSW community legal centre is based, principal solicitor Pat O’Callaghan said family violence cases have also crunched resources.
He said there was a four-week wait for family violence clients, and while he received an unexpected $120,000 funding increase late last month, he is still waiting on further family violence related funding commitments from the federal government.
He was also yet to find a solicitor to fill the position funded with that $120,000 – a recruit he expects will be difficult to find, given a shortage of lawyers across the sector, and the difficulty of attracting someone to move to the country when only a year’s work is guaranteed.
The manager of strategic and community development at Melbourne’s South-East Monash Legal Service, Ashleigh Newnham, was in a similar position to O’Callaghan. While they have not had to pause any services, demand is higher than ever, driven largely by an increase in family violence cases.
The South Australian Legal Services Commission, which is the largest provider of legal help in the state, said record numbers of people were applying for assistance, with demand increasing almost 20% in four years.
“This is a steep and staggering rise,” the commission’s chief executive , Gabrielle Canny, said.
“We anticipate the effects of Covid will only make things worse.”
Not all state’s were faring as poorly: Queensland legal aid and community legal centres received five-year agreements worth hundreds of millions of dollars from the state government in May.
The chief executive of the Women’s Legal Service Tasmania, Yvette Cehtel, said her centre had been able to meet demand under funding announced by the previous federal government.
A spokesperson for Dreyfus said he was developing his vision for the sector, which he has described as “needing repair work”.
“We recognise the extraordinary pressures these services are under, and the importance of strengthening the legal assistance sector,” the spokesperson said.
“The most vulnerable Australians rely on legal assistance services for access to justice.
“While the next National Legal Assistance Partnership is not due to expire until 2025, the attorney general is closely consulting with the sector on their needs.”
The spokesperson said Labor committed $24m to the sector during the election campaign, made up of $12m for community legal centres in areas affected by bushfires or floods in Queensland and NSW, $8m to support the work of the Environmental Defenders Office across Australia, $1m for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services and $3m for the Family Violence Protection Legal Services Forum.
