Riverland Community Legal Service

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (14:44): My question is to the Attorney-General. How does the state government plan to deal with the current cases of the Riverland Community Legal Service, which ceased on 1 July this year due to South Australian government funding cuts?

The Hon. J.R. RAU (Enfield—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General, Minister for Justice Reform, Minister for Planning, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Child Protection Reform, Minister for the Public Sector, Minister for Consumer and Business Services, Minister for the City of Adelaide) (14:45): I would really like to say thank you very much to the member for Chaffey for that question because it gives me an opportunity to report to the house about the impacts of a very nasty federal government decision about 18 months ago. If you think about it, in the context of the federal budget, it was not only nasty but miserable.

What they decided to do was to attack, in effect, the community legal centre sector, which is traditionally funded by the commonwealth government, and pull lots of money out of the community legal centre sector across Australia. They said to us in South Australia, 'We are taking all this money off you. What we'll give you, though, is a one-off grant of just over $1 million to try to do a readjustment process.' I immediately called a meeting of all the community legal centres in South Australia. I sat down with them and asked them what they wanted us to do. Did they want us to fight the commonwealth government with them, or did they want us to accept the money and go through the change, or what did they want us to do?

We agreed that we would try to work through the change, because it appeared to be inevitable, and at the same time, in collaboration with the other attorneys around the country, we would attempt to get a reversal of that decision. I can say that attorneys-general throughout the country, irrespective of their political allegiance, were happy to sign correspondence jointly to Senator Brandis asking him to reconsider his position. His government chose not to reconsider that position, so we have been through this lengthy process whereby we were forced by the commonwealth into finding a new way of delivering legal services through the community legal centre sector with a significantly reduced federal budget.

That process ultimately resulted in a series of tenders being set. The tenders required services to be delivered across the state, just not in the metropolitan area. In addition to that, we were able to change the methodology so that the initial first call where somebody is seeking advice would not have to be to a CLC. It could be to the Legal Services Commission, who would provide a lot of that early advice across their telephone, thereby often saving people the need to engage with a CLC at all because they have had that early triage, if you like, of, 'Do you have a significant legal problem or do you not?'

We have improved the service across the state, in the sense that we now have a first answer coming by telephone from the Legal Services Commission. Then we have the successful tenderers for the delivery of those services in place around the state, delivering those services. There are two areas that had been of particular concern, and understandably so: one is the Mount in the South-East and the other one is the Riverland.

In both cases, I have had meetings with local government representatives from those areas because they have asked me, 'Can we have a chat about this?' and I have said, 'Yes, that's fine.' Can I say that the member for Mount Gambier has approached me about this as well. I appreciate him taking that matter up on behalf of his constituents.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: A hardworking local member.

The Hon. J.R. RAU: Yes, he came to me and he approached it in the right spirit, which was trying to solve the problem. We are now in a position where we are attempting to do that. I have made it clear to local government in all those areas that if there are some ways we can cooperate—for example, by local government providing us with resources like an office or housing or something that will actually enable us to stretch the service further—we are very happy to cooperate with them, and there will be face-to-face services.

An honourable member: Time!