Indigenous justice: Indigenous Legal Aid - Productivity Commission urges funding rethink - Age, p 8 The Abbott government should add $200 million a year to legal assistance services around Australia and reverse cuts to indigenous legal services to meet widespread need, the Productivity Commission says. The commissions year-long inquiry into access-to-justice arrangements, released Wednesday, found significant gaps in free legal help for family violence and child protection matters. The commission was particularly worried about the gap in independent lawyer services for children. The report said the funding boost would enable legal aid commissions, community legal centres and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services to maintain their frontline services and help more people. It would make about 400,000 more people eligible for civil legal aid grants and about 10 per cent of households eligible for legal aid services, in line with the proportion of disadvantaged Australians. The commissions findings defy the Coalitions plans to slash more than $40 million from the legal assistance sector over the next four years, and come amid growing pressure to increase funding. Funding to legal aid services has been cut in recent years, at the same time as demand has been growing. Successive federal governments contributions to legal aid commissions have fallen every year since 1997 from about 50 per cent to a third of all funding. Adding $200 million a year would almost double Canberras contribution to 60 per cent. The Coalition scrapped Labors promise to add $15 million to legal aid commissions in the May budget. It also plans to cut about $43 million from the legal assistance sector, including Family Violence Prevention Legal Services, over the next four years. The Productivity Commission said legal aid commissions imposed ``too restrictive means tests, below those of other government benefits, because they were underfunded: ``It is not the case that people are `too wealthy to be eligible for legal assistance, but rather that they are `not sufficiently impoverished. Any funding increase was ``challenging: ``However, not providing legal assistance in these instances can be a false economy as the costs of unresolved problems are often shifted to other areas of government spending such as healthcare, housing and child protection. Numerous Australian and overseas studies show that there are net public benefits from legal assistance expenditure. National Legal Aid spokesman Bevan Warner said the report was proof that legal aid financially benefited other sectors in the community. ``A smart, economic rationalist government would want to adopt the recommendations of its own Productivity Commission, Mr Warner, Victoria Legal Aids managing director, said.
Posted on: Tue, 09 Dec 2014 11:14:59 +0000
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