State attorney generals have failed to win any additional legal aid funding from the federal government, despite six of the states attacking the money on the table as an “abrogation” of the commonwealth’s responsibilities.
The federal government has offered $1.3bn for a five-year funding agreement for legal aid and community legal centres, and another $300m for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services.
The Law Council of Australia, the Australian Bar Association and the NSW Bar Association have all warned that the administration of justice will be compromised unless more money is found, and the Productivity Commission has estimated an extra $200m is needed.
But the Victorian attorney general, Martin Pakula, told Guardian Australia that after “a polite but firm discussion” federal attorney general George Brandis had said there was “no additional funding available”.
Six states – New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania – have had their funding cut under a new formula for distributing the federal money, and say there will be dire consequences as a result of the shortfall.
“It becomes a real problem two years from now, our community legal services lose $3m in 2017, so they’ll have to scale back their operations,” Pakula said.
In March, when the federal government was removing so-called political “barnacles”, Brandis reversed previously announced cuts to legal aid that had been slated for the next two years, citing the Coalition’s commitment to tackling domestic violence as one reason for the change of heart.
But the attorney generals say the cuts have merely been deferred, particularly for community legal centres.
The Queensland attorney general, Yvette D’Ath, told the state parliament that because attorney generals across the country had “stood together ... to call on the commonwealth government to stop the cuts to CLCs, the commonwealth attorney general said that he will not proceed with the cuts for this year. But in two years time the funding just falls off the cliff”.
The NSW attorney general, Gabrielle Upton, said the NSW government was “deeply concerned about the commonwealth’s funding cuts to Legal Aid NSW and Aboriginal Legal Services next financial year” which would “affect the most vulnerable members of the community in particular women and children escaping domestic violence”.
The states have also complained about new criteria determining who can receive legal aid funding, saying they could threaten the provision of legal help for domestic violence victims.
Brandis told the state attorneys he did not accept that these concerns were justified.
The new agreement is scheduled to be signed by 30 June.
