The 2023-24 budget demonstrates the government’s clear intention to target expenditure towards supporting people experiencing financial hardship to meet cost-of-living pressures. We welcome this focus. However, the budget contains very little new funding to improve access to justice, or to support struggling legal assistance services to meet overwhelming demand for legal help. People experiencing poverty and intersectional disadvantage are more likely to have multiple legal problems, to have fewer resources to resolve them, and to become enmeshed in the criminal legal system. As such, it is particularly disappointing that legal assistance services have been largely overlooked in a budget that focuses its attention squarely on doing more for people doing it tough.
As the Law Council of Australia notes in its budget response, ‘the government already knows that significant additional investment in the sector is needed and waiting for the [mid-point review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership] only means that people continue to go without access to the services they need.’
On budget day, media reports quoting government sources suggested community legal services might benefit from the commitment of an additional $4 billion over four years to help government and community services for people experiencing disadvantage to meet rising costs through more realistic indexation. Unfortunately, the Attorney-General’s Deparment has since confirmed that, as happened in the October 2022 budget, community legal services funded under the National Legal Assistance Partnership are excluded from this measure.
More broadly, we agree with Economic Justice Australia (EJA) that the budget represents a ‘heartening paradigm shift on social security payments. As EJA notes, there are no new compliance measures, ParentsNext is abolished and there is targeted support for single parents, some renters, and people over the age of 55. However, the meagre increase to the base rate of JobSeeker, Youth Allowance, and Austudy of just $2.80 per day, means these payments remain poverty payments. With structural deficits forecast over the forward estimates and tough economic times ahead, the government must use the 2024-25 budget to abandon the unfair and unnecessary stage three tax cuts and raise the rate to $76 per day.
This budget could have achieved much more
While we welcome many budget measures aimed at supporting people experiencing financial disadvantage, the budget is disappointing for the legal assistance sector overall. Demand for legal assistance is growing and, financially, our sector is going backwards. In a tight fiscal context, investment in early intervention measures that prevent problems from escalating is a sensible budget move. Unexpectedly high revenue and the first budget surplus in 15 years provided the government with an opportunity to do more to address the chronic underfunding of community legal services and to fund other progressive access to justice initiatives.
We are concerned about the lack of new money for community-controlled Aboriginal legal services, which will begin to close their books to new clients across the country from 1 July if the funding crisis they face is not addressed.
Investment in the community legal sector prevents downstream costs
Investment in community legal services means people can access legal help where and when they need it, regardless of their income or postcode. This helps to prevent problems escalating, improves outcomes for people and saves governments money over the long term. Investing in the community legal sector returns an investment of $18 for every $1 spent.
Welcome measures include:
What we want to see going forward:
You can read previous budget statements below:
