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Pressure for Rudd on legal aid

Joel Gibson Indigenous Affairs Reporter

4 April 2008 - MORE funding for the struggling Aboriginal Legal Aid services could be a key to economic development in remote indigenous communities, says a criminologist, Chris Cunneen.

The comments by Professor Cunneen, the New South Global Professor in Criminology at the University of NSW, add to pressure on the Federal Government to increase the budget for indigenous legal services.

The Herald revealed on Monday that the Government had offered no extra funding in real terms in negotiations with the Aboriginal Legal Aid services, despite a Labor promise to do so. In NSW services such as a hotline for indigenous people in custody and family violence officer positions were to be cut by June unless funding was increased, said the administrators.

In the latest issue of the Criminal Law Journal Professor Cunneen and a co-author, Melanie Schwartz, say heavy workloads have left indigenous legal services incapable of dealing with the civil and family law issues needed to build economic infrastructure in remote Australia. The legal aid providers are supposed to cover all legal services, but have to limit their focus to criminal matters because federal funding has not kept pace with inflation since 1996, and states refuse to top it up.

"Indigenous people in remote communities do not have access to adequate information, let alone advice or representation about  civil law matters, such as housing, consumer rights, credit and debt, employment law, negligence, corporations law and so on," the article says.

More funding is needed to stem jail rates that have risen by more than 20 per cent for men and 30 per cent for women since 2000, and to tackle the related rise in indigenous victims of crime, it says.

BROKEN PROMISE WILL LEAD TO LEGAL AID CUTS

By Joel Gibson Indigenous Affairs Reporter

31 March 2008 - ABORIGINAL legal aid services are preparing to cut services after the Federal Government reneged on an election promise to increase their funding for the first time in 12 years.

In NSW and the ACT, a hotline for Aboriginal people in police custody could be gone by June, as could domestic violence counsellors and representation at Supreme Court bail hearings and parole board hearings, said Trevor Christian, the director of the NSW/ACT Aboriginal Legal Aid Service.

The hotline receives between 200 and 300 calls a week and was a recommendation of the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander deaths in custody. NSW requires police to call it whenever an indigenous person is arrested.

But the Attorney-General's Department has offered about $41 million over the next three years for Aboriginal legal aid in NSW - a decrease in real terms from the annual budget of $13.2 million.

The director of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, Heather Sculthorpe, said the funding offered for Aboriginal legal aid in Tasmania was also less than the consumer price index, and that the pattern was being repeated in funding negotiations under way across the states and territories.

A 2004 Senate report and a 2003 Office of Evaluation & Audit Report both found there was an annual nationwide shortfall of funding for Aboriginal legal aid of about $25 million.

Aboriginal Legal Aid services from all states and territories petitioned the Minister for Home Affairs, Bob Debus, in January for an immediate 30 per cent rise in funding. They said they were "unable to meet community need and retain and attract experienced staff".

They said all federal governments since the Whitlam years had appropriately funded Aboriginal Legal Aid, except for the Howard government.

"Since the Howard government took office in 1996 the budget … has been static in dollar terms … This has resulted in a loss of almost 40 per cent in real term funding … and placed unrealistic and unsustainable pressures [on us]."

Aboriginal legal aid salaries are about 65 per cent of those of their government and mainstream legal aid counterparts, the submission said, and this had led to low morale and high staff turnover.

Mr Christian said the ratio of funding per client between mainstream and Aboriginal legal aid had climbed to 9:1 despite the over-representation of indigenous people in prisons. He said NSW refused to contribute to Aboriginal legal aid despite requiring police to contact its lawyers whenever an indigenous person is in custody.

"It's cost-shifting all the time. The Federal Government says it's a state responsibility and the State Government says Aboriginal people are a federal responsibility," Mr Christian said.

Indigenous imprisonment rates had risen by 31.9 per cent since 2000, the 2006 Overcoming Indigenous Disadvantage report shows.

Indigenous prisoners make up about 2 per cent of the general population but 23.6 per cent of the prison population, and indigenous people are still 13 times more likely than non-indigenous people to be imprisoned.

Labor went to the federal election promising to increase funding for Aboriginal Legal Aid.

A spokeswoman for Mr Debus said funding for Aboriginal Legal Aid Services was going through the budget process and it would be premature to comment on the outcome.

Source: The Sydney Morning Herald

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