Were they so inclined, politicians in Canberra would not have to go far to see the social impact of the legislation they pass. The consequences of their decisions are there in the carefully planned streets of the capital. Not far from the halls of power, people are struggling to survive.
As the executive director and principal solicitor with Canberra Community Law, Genevieve Bolton sees the consequences every day. The community legal centre provides free legal services to the disadvantaged and vulnerable on matters such as housing law, social security law, disability discrimination law and more. The organisation is stretched and employees work long hours with outreach services such as Street Law and Night Time Legal Advice Service, yet Bolton says they are not able to help everyone they see. “We are working in an incredibly cash-strapped environment,” she says.
Things are getting worse. “Over the past couple of years, we are seeing an increased number of people in very difficult circumstances”, she says. Although the organisation tries to catch people before they are in crisis, a lack of government investment has resulted in a severe shortage of public housing. Similarly, a raft of reforms to Centrelink and social security has made it more difficult for people to access their payments. “It is also much more difficult for people who have complex needs. People contact us who have had no income support for months because they haven’t been able to cope with the system.”
Bolton regularly crosses the divide between those who walk the corridors of Parliament House and the frightened, vulnerable clients with no house at all; providing submissions and appearing before Senate inquiries dealing with public housing and social security issues.
“Genevieve is someone who will always provide a valuable perspective, and can uniquely do so from the point of view of those who are most at risk in Canberra, and who are too often forgotten” says Shane Rattenbury, the ACT Greens minister for justice.
Bolton’s empathy for those who are stranded in poverty, who have disabilities, poor mental health or suffering family violence, comes from her own impoverished childhood with a single mother. From an early age, she had a clear understanding of struggle and hardship, and she knows what it feels like to grow up without much money. “I felt the disadvantage associated with that”, she says.
Her parents divorced when Bolton and her two siblings were young. In the late 70s, there was stigma attached to that. “I was one of the few families at my local Catholic primary school whose parents had broken up. That also had an impact on how I viewed the world. ”
Her mother worked as a nurse at Brisbane’s Holy Spirit hospital (now Brisbane Private) to support her children at a time when women earned a fraction of what men did. When it became too difficult to juggle night shifts with raising her children, her mother got a job with a specialist in private practice. Yet despite the family’s hardship, education, working hard and social justice issues was always a high priority, Bolton says.
She grew up knowing she wanted to help people. Once she finished her law degree, she knew she didn’t want to go into private practise or commercial law, but didn’t know what the alternatives were: “I had some concept of legal aid, but I had no concept that there was such a thing as a community lawyer, or what a community lawyer might do.”
Uncertain, she took a year off to join a social justice program in Victoria as a volunteer. “ I was placed in a community legal centre, working in a refugee legal centre. I did a lot of work assisting people in Australia who had relatives in refugee camps overseas wanting to come to Australia.” She had found her calling at the intersection of human rights and the law, and she joined the Canberra Community Law centre in 2003.
Bolton says there can be significant and complex underlying issues for people facing eviction, such as mental health, family violence and family breakdown. “Anyone can end up in a very difficult situation because of their circumstances,” she says.
Canberra Community Law recently became the first legal body to utilise the Human Rights Act in routine actions related to housing and eviction. For instance, Bolton has argued that eviction would have “a disproportionate and unreasonable impact” on a resident. Says Bolton: “Being able to develop that body of law has been absolutely critical to the success we have been able to achieve in assisting people at serious risk of losing their homes.”
And in early 2017, she established Dhurrawang, a program which provides specialist legal services to Aboriginal people utilising a human rights framework. “This means that our clients are engaged in the process of advocacy, empowered to self-advocate and are involved in all decisions that impact them.”
In 2015 she was awarded the Australian Human Rights Commission’s law award for her work. Although she was shocked to receive the award at the time, she welcomed it. “It was a recognition of the role that community legal centres play within the broader community and how important it is that people are able to access justice.”
Bolton has spent her 20-year career working in an environment that is stressful, heartbreaking and frustrating; fighting for people she might never see again and who are not always grateful for her help. It can bepoorly paid work that others would find dispiriting.
This is something Rattenbury recognises: “Community legal services are chronically underfunded, and in this environment it is often left to tireless champions to fill the gap – working long hours, finding innovative ways to make projects, and dedicating themselves to the job with little expectation of reward. Genevieve is one of these rare people.”
She sees it differently. “I actually think how lucky I am to be able to do a job that I am passionate about and committed to. It is incredibly challenging work, but it is so rewarding.
“What I have seen over my years in the community legal sector is just how courageous and resilient people are. People who have faced significant difficulties and hurdles in their lives have been remarkable in their capacity to not only cope but look at a way of being able to move on in their life.”
