National Legal Funding Agreement

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (14:51): My question is to the Attorney-General.

Members interjecting:

The SPEAKER: Order!

Mr TEAGUE: Can the Attorney update the house on the national legal funding agreement recently signed with the federal government and how that will bring benefits to the South Australians accessing legal services?

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN (Bragg—Deputy Premier, Attorney-General) (14:51): Indeed, I am very happy to and I thank the member for Heysen for his contribution in this regard because, as a member of the legal profession before coming to our parliament to provide the service to this parliament—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: Yes, wasn't that a good idea?

The SPEAKER: The member for West Torrens is on two warnings.

The Hon. V.A. CHAPMAN: —obviously he had been a valued member in the profession for many years. He is familiar, as some others would be, of the need to ensure that where people are alienated from access to representation and advice at a professional level in legal services there needs to be some supplement. He is possibly a bit too young to remember when the Law Society used to provide all of that service. They have got out of the business in the last few decades and that is largely now undertaken to provide support for people who are unable to financially avail themselves of those services.

The legal services commissions around the country—every state has one—are independent organisations with a board. They make decisions about who gets legal aid, what the terms are and who gets to do the legal work. They are quite independent. That has been a process undertaken for some years. I will say that JusticeNet is a service that allows a coordination of practitioners who are still prepared to do pro bono work—and we thank them for that—but largely the Legal Services Commission, complemented by a number of our community legal centres across the state and the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement, which has had a very long-standing contribution to the representation of Aboriginal people in our state, has had the bulk of the responsibility.

When the Premier signed up to the new funding agreement, it was a great day because the negotiations that had taken place between attorneys-general—including the federal Attorney-General, the Hon. Christian Porter—landed in a circumstance where we now have, over the next five years, a near $150 million arrangement. Of that, $95 million under the new agreement will go to the Legal Services Commission, $26 million to the community legal services centres, and $27 million to the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement over those next five years.

What is particularly important to me is that we have negotiated funding to include $7.2 million for the CLCs to deliver family law and family violence services, $1.708 million to the Legal Services Commission to provide family advocacy and support services, and $5.249 million for domestic violence units and health justice partnerships. For our side of government, this is a priority area. It was important to have it incorporated.

The other thing I think is very important is that with the restructuring of the ATSILS—the only one of which we have in South Australia is the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement (ALRM)—we preserve their right to be able to provide other non-legal services to the people that they provide services to. That was critical to the ALRM and very important to our government.

This is a landmark agreement. It does restructure how this has been delivered, and we have continued to champion as a government the most important services—and not just an expansion of dollars, but where there are vulnerable citizens, especially where they are experiencing homelessness, families in need of legal assistance and communities that otherwise have no access to representation.

This has been the plea of the law councils and law societies around the country for decades. This government has listened. The federal government has put the money on the table. We have signed up. We are very proud of it, and I am pleased to report that to the house today.