Community Legal Centres Australia has welcomed the Commonwealth’s re-affirmation of its funding contribution to the National Access to Justice Partnership agreement 2025-30 in today’s MYEFO and the increase in funding to community legal centres, while noting that this increased funding will still fall short of what is required to meet need in the community.

Community legal centres provide free legal and related help for victim-survivors of family violence, people experiencing homelessness, parents resolving family law matters, people affected by floods and bushfires, people experiencing harassment or exploitation at work, low-income renters with tenancy problems, people who need financial counselling, and others on low incomes. Chronic underfunding over the last decade has pushed many local services to the brink of closure and led to poor pay and conditions for staff.

In September 2024, the Commonwealth announced its contribution to the next 5-year funding agreement for legal assistance, the National Access to Justice Partnership. This includes an $800 million boost over five years to be divided between the five legal assistance provider types: community legal centres, Women’s Legal Services, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services, and Legal Aid Commissions. This funding commitment was reaffirmed in today’s MYEFO.

Community Legal Centres Australia’s recently published annual state of the sector report, More than legal services: preventing crises, strengthening communities, found that community legal centres have been forced to turn away over a thousand people a day for the past two years due to funding shortfalls, including over 3,000 people impacted by domestic and family violence every week in 2023-24. Domestic and family violence support is the single largest area of need, making up 40-50% of the sector’s work, and rising to 70-80% for rural, remote and very remote centres.

The same report noted that, even with the Commonwealth’s increased investment announced in September, community legal need will still far exceed the capacity of services to respond.

Quotes attributable to Community Legal Centres CEO Tim Leach

“We appreciate the certainty provided by the National Access to Justice Partnership and the additional Commonwealth funding for the legal assistance sector, particularly the significant increases for specialist Women’s Legal Services and Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services.”

“Even with this additional investment, legal need in the community will still far exceed the capacity of community legal services to respond. Over the past year, the community legal sector has been forced to turn away 3,000 people impacted by domestic and family violence every week. We were able to help over 190,000 people in 2023-24, but more than double that number of people sought our assistance and were turned away because of under-resourcing.”

“The Commonwealth’s targeted funding boost to address pay disparity is a welcome start but cannot come close to delivering pay parity to our highly feminised workforce.”

“We have yet to see the required investment from federal, state and territory governments to deliver significant change. We will continue our advocacy at all levels and build on progress this year to ensure everyone in the community can access the legal support they need to be safe, avoid and resolve crises, and move forward in life.”