Women's Legal Service

Adjourned debate on motion of Hon. J.S. Lee:

That this council—

1. Congratulates the Women's Legal Service for celebrating its 20^th anniversary in October 2015;

2. Acknowledges the significant work and commitment of the Women's Legal Service in achieving justice for women, including the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, and women from culturally, linguistically diverse background;

3. Highlights the collaborations and partnerships made throughout its history; and

4. Acknowledges the remarkable achievements by the Women's Legal Service as a community legal centre for women.

(Continued from 13 April 2016.)

The Hon. G.E. GAGO (17:05): I rise to support this really important motion congratulating the Women's Legal Service on celebrating 20 years in October 2015. We certainly commend the work of the Women's Legal Service in South Australia and congratulate them on their 20^th anniversary.

The Women's Legal Services Australia is a national network of community legal centres specialising in women's legal issues. They are part of the National Association of Community Legal Centres. Their mission is to promote a legal system that is safe, supportive, non-discriminatory, and responsive to the needs of women accessing justice. The Women's Legal Service has been, and continues to be, an integral part of legal services for the South Australian community. Women of all backgrounds have been assisted by the service, and it has a special place in the South Australian legal frameworks.

Understanding one's legal rights is something that can often be hard to achieve when language and cultural barriers stand in the way. The Women's Legal Service has a long history of helping women to overcome these barriers to live safely. In particular, the service has played an incredibly valuable role in providing ongoing support of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, and women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who are escaping or experiencing domestic violence and sexual assault. The service also assists women living in the APY lands to understand their rights and escape violent situations.

All South Australian women must be able to access justice supports. Living in remote parts of South Australia can make access difficult at times, and it is important to ensure remoteness is not a barrier to receiving assistance. This service has run outreach programs to rural areas of South Australia to ensure these women can access and understand the remedies and actions available to them.

Women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds can have cultural and language barriers that make it extremely difficult for them to know about and understand their fundamental legal rights. The Women's Legal Service has done an outstanding job working with this group of women to ensure culture and language are not barriers to accessing support.

The Women's Legal Service has worked with many diverse women's groups, domestic violence services, migrant services, government and non-government agencies. The Women's Legal Service has done an outstanding job of educating the women of South Australia about their legal rights as well as providing representation in court and advice on many legal matters over the past 20 years.

However, it is somewhat ironic that this motion has been put forward by the Liberal Party opposite me, whose federal colleagues have been responsible for gutting the funding to this very service. The Turnbull Liberal government announced in September 2015 their $41 million domestic violence plan. The plan revealed it would be slashing the service's funding from $850,000 per annum to $420,000 per annum from 2017.

Days later, on 2 October 2015, Zita Ngor, the Director of the Women's Legal Service, was quoted in an article on AdelaideNow.com.au titled 'Adelaide's leading women's support centre reveals it is struggling to stay afloat' as saying:

At a time where we should be focusing on helping women flee domestic and family violence, Women's Legal Service (SA) is fighting to keep its doors open.

This is a time when up to 100 women per year are dying at the hands of domestically violent perpetrators per year. The Women's Legal Service is a front-line service for women fleeing violence and in 2014-15 assisted more than 3,000 women and helped secure 650 intervention orders.

While I commend and applaud this motion, it is coupled with grave disappointment that the congratulations are not being supported by the federal Liberal government, whose funding cuts will have such a savage impact on legal services for women in South Australia. I call on all those state Liberal members opposite, if they really care about the Women's Legal Service, to lobby their federal Liberal colleagues to reinstate those vital funds, which are planned to be slashed.

The Hon. A.L. McLACHLAN (17:10): I rise to support the Hon. Jing Lee's motion in congratulating the Women's Legal Service of South Australia on their 20^th anniversary. I am a White Ribbon Ambassador. I have a deep interest in supporting organisations that are involved in assisting and improving the lives of women suffering in domestic violence situations. Given that 50 per cent of clients at the Women's Legal Service are victims of family violence, it is fitting that we recognise the important work this organisation carries out for the community.

Many victims of domestic violence are financially dependent on their partner and would find it difficult to access legal services if they were not available through the Women's Legal Service. The Parliament of Australia's Library Research Paper entitled 'Domestic, family and sexual violence in Australia: an overview of the issues' states that, regardless of their prior economic circumstances, many women experience financial risk or poverty as a result of domestic violence. In the Women's Legal Services of South Australia 2014-15 Annual Report, Penny, a family violence survivor, states:

I do not have the money to fight legally with my husband and have no one around me as support. I needed someone to give me a head start, WLSSA helped me to get the start I needed.

By providing free legal services to these women, the financial strain they are under is alleviated at a time when they are at a very difficult phase in their lives and must deal with the emotional scars caused by violence in their own homes.

The Women's Legal Service helps provide assistance in a number of family legal matters that can assist in the improvement of their lives. Some of these family legal services involve advising on intervention orders, child protection and child support. I commend the Women's Legal Service for their 20 years of service improving the lives of women and, particularly, victims of domestic violence in South Australia.

I would also like to recognise the volunteers who devote their time to the organisation. As a non-profit organisation, the Women's Legal Service relies on funding from government and other organisations but, in particular, it relies on the dedicated time of volunteers. The 2014-15 report notes that, in that year alone, volunteers provided 5,928 hours of their time to the organisation.

The organisation would not be able to continue without the great work of these volunteers who devote their time to improve the lives of some of South Australia's most vulnerable women. I commend this motion to the chamber and I congratulate the Women's Legal Service of South Australia on 20 years of dedicated service to the women of South Australia.

The Hon. T.A. FRANKS (17:12): On behalf of the Greens, I also rise to express our support for this very important motion. I thank the Hon. Jing Lee for moving this motion in our chamber to give us the opportunity to note and wholeheartedly support the recognition of the significant contribution of the Women's Legal Service. It is just one of the many community legal centres committed to the cause of social justice and fairness, as well as justice, of course. I express my sincere congratulations to them on the significant milestone of their 20^th anniversary.

One would think that with a 20-year track record like this, we would see them going from strength to strength. They certainly do incredibly important work for some of our society's most vulnerable members or members of our society in their most vulnerable times. The service helped more than 2,500 women last year, one in two of whom were victims of domestic violence or, as I would prefer to say, survivors of domestic violence. Yet, it is facing cuts of up to 50 per cent.

According to the Women's Legal Service President, Ms Zita Ngor, the service works with about 200 Aboriginal women a year, two-thirds of whom are also suffering family violence. Furthermore, one out of five women who access the centre have a disability, and one in five are homeless or at risk of homelessness. But time and time again the message is clearly being sent by the federal government that the Women's Legal Service and, in fact, all community legal services are not valued and are not being supported with the commensurate funding that they need to do their job to ensure protections for these most vulnerable members of our community.

If the federal government proceeds with slashing legal aid funding, the Women's Legal Service in our state may be forced to drop its 300 cases next financial year and cease outreach services to rural and remote areas such as Ceduna, Port Augusta, Coober Pedy and, of course, the APY lands.

As noted, or lamented indeed by the Law Council of Australia, this year's federal budget continues to underfund legal aid to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The federal government has not only stood by these budget cuts, these savage budget cuts that were announced in 2014, but has announced further cuts for 2017. This will result in $12.1 million being stripped from our community legal centres and a further $4.5 million stripped from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service.

The federal government may hold up funding for specialist domestic violence units around the country as a commitment to treating what is a scourge—the scourge of domestic and family violence in this country. However, while the unit run by the Legal Services Commission at Elizabeth will assist that particular area, what are those survivors across the rest of our state left with?

I support calls on all levels of government to commit the additional $200 million per year identified by the Productivity Commission as being required to adequately fund all legal assistance services in Australia, and congratulate our legal community for raising its ire at this savage cut. I note that the Law Society of South Australia just yesterday held a rally in Victoria Square and reiterate and draw to the attention of this council their demands which read as follows:

Australian governments must:

1. Increase the commonwealth's share of Legal Aid Commission funding to 50 per cent with the states and territories. This would amount to an addition $126 million in the 2016 commonwealth budget.

2. Immediately provide a further $120 million to cover civil legal assistance with the states and territories contributing $80 million, comprising a total of $200 million as recommended by the Productivity Commission.

3. Immediately reverse further commonwealth funding cuts to legal assistance services announced in 2014 that are due to take effect from July 2017. These include:

(a) $12.1 million in cuts to community legal centres;

(b) $4 million in cuts to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services; and

(c) all cuts directed at policy and advocacy work conducted by legal assistance bodies as recommended by the Productivity Commission.

We have heard just today on a very important report, I believe, by the Social Development Committee on family and domestic violence. We know as a nation that this is one of the most serious challenges that we have in our communities. Certainly I think you cannot say that you stand against domestic violence and family violence in this country and oversee cuts to the very services that support our most vulnerable and, in this case, the Women's Legal Service.

The Hon. K.L. VINCENT (17:18): I want to put a few brief words on the record on behalf of Dignity for Disability to mark this important motion. I certainly thank the Hon. Ms Lee for bringing this motion forward to the council to mark the 20^th anniversary of the Women's Legal Service (WLS). The WLS certainly provides an invaluable service to South Australia. While we are discussing the excellent work of this service, I would like to reiterate the funding challenges that the Hon. Ms Gago and also the Hon. Ms Franks have referred to—the challenges that they are currently facing need to be noted and certainly rallied against.

This has been an ongoing issue for the past 12 months in terms of their funding, and I understand that senior solicitor, Connie Mittiga, has also been on the radio in recent times with stories of the funding challenges and the cuts to their important service—the Women's Legal Service—is facing. It is a microbusiness but it is certainly not receiving the funding that it deserves for the enormous work it does and provides services with such a small team and a group of volunteers to the women of South Australia and particularly women in very difficult circumstances. So, we certainly need to be providing more support to them.

I would also like to put on the record some of the achievements of their exceptional director, Zita Ngor, an outstanding woman and, it is important to note, a woman of migrant background. Zita travelled from South Sudan with her mother Margaret and siblings to join their father in Adelaide in 1989. The Ngor contingent was one of the first African Sudanese families to establish themselves within the broader community of South Australia.

Zita's achievements include that she was involved with Multicultural Youth South Australia from 2000 to 2003, awarded the national centenary model for service to the community in 2001, and selected as an NGO delegate adviser to the Australian government delegation attending CSW57 in New York during March 2013. She also convened and organised the first national conference in Australia to look at issues of gender-based violence in relation to women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds in April 2013 as part of Stand Up! national conference on the elimination of all forms of violence against CALD women.

Her leadership of women within the South Australian community and the broader regions of Coober Pedy and Whyalla, as well as remote APY lands, covers an extensive and vast range of positions. Her connection with the Indigenous community in particular in many differing positions has seen her become a determined advocate for women and their families who are traumatised or challenged through domestic violence, child custody battles and family breakdown.

Currently as Director of the Women's Legal Service, from 4 January to 2010 to the present, Zita has driven and overseen rebranding and diversification of the organisation, which I think needs to be recognised. This free service is the only women-specific agency providing legal information, legal advice, legal representation and referrals to women of all ethnic and cultural backgrounds that identify from within the low socio-economic bracket.

So certainly the work that Zita and the Women's Legal Service is doing, not only for women who can already face significant barriers but women specifically in low socio-economic backgrounds, is very important and I congratulate them on that and look forward to hopefully getting the funding and support that is needed to see that work continue far into the future.

The Hon. J.S. LEE (17:22): I thank the Hon. Gail Gago, the Hon. Andrew McLachlan, the Hon. Tammy Franks and the Hon. Kelly Vincent for their contributions. I particularly wish to thank the Hons Ms Gago, Ms Franks and Ms Vincent for their continuous work in supporting women and women's issues and also advocating for revised funding. I appreciate and recognise the fact that there are funding issues and challenges facing the Women's Legal Service. I report that when I spoke to the acting shadow minister for women, Vickie Chapman, in the other place, she had met with our federal counterparts in the Liberal Coalition government, and she is actually advocating for them to revise the funding. We from our side will continue to do so.

Nevertheless the Women's Legal Service has achieved 20 years of remarkable service and an outstanding commitment to addressing legal services for women, especially the most vulnerable in our community, which has to be recognised and paid tribute to. I thank all honourable members for their contribution in supporting this motion.

Motion carried.