9 September 2024
It is with mixed feelings that Economic Justice Australia received the legal services funding announcement made by the Federal Government on Friday. The Government announced a commitment of $3.9 billion as part of the National Access to Justice Partnership, the main source of financial support for Australia’s community legal sector.
While this represents an $800-million uplift on the last five-year partnership agreement, it is misleading in that this “package” is to be allocated across four distinct types of legal services, all of which have deep scars from decades of chronic underfunding, and none of which will be adequately remedied by this band-aid injection. Social security is one area that is in urgent need of individual care.
In addition to the baseline funding that has already been committed, EJA is pleading with Government to learn the lessons of the Robodebt Royal Commission and support social security legal services with an additional, specialist funding stream of $5 million per year for the duration of the next funding agreement.
“Social security is recognised as a fundamental human right precisely because it acts as a buffer against so many different types of crises, from alleviating poverty and homelessness, to supporting youth justice and social inclusion, to assisting victim-survivors of domestic violence. Everyone has the right to an adequate safety net, and without specialist funding for social security legal services, the sizeable holes in this safety net will remain unpatched. And we have already seen just how bad things can get when the system fails,” says EJA CEO Kate Allingham.
“Robodebt and the subsequent Royal Commission should have been a wake-up call to Government about how serious the problem is, and how profoundly social security issues can impact individuals and communities. It should also have been a wake-up call to the essential social justice role played by social security legal services.
“We hope that bundling the National Access to Justice Partnership funding in with the cover-all announcement on Friday wasn’t an attempt to use the crisis as a Trojan horse to renege on previous commitments. We remind Government that the agreement was a pre-existing commitment. We also remind them of their duty to listen to the recommendations made by the Robodebt Royal Commission and provide specialist funding to social security legal services.
“This is the Government’s chance to prove the Royal Commission wasn’t simply an act of lip service to their commitment to human rights,” says Ms Allingham.
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Media contact: Kirsty Sier | 0435 075 085 | kirsty@ejaustralia.org.au