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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2015-03-17 Daily Xml
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Women's Legal Service (SA)

Ms HILDYARD (Reynell) (15:50): I rise today to speak on an issue that is very close to my heart and so very important, particularly this week, after the tragic death of Jackie Ohide, a resident of Hackham West, a member of our southern community and a victim of intimate family violence. Along with so many others in our community, I was devastated to hear of her tragic death. I have thought about her and her children with a heavy heart over the past few days. It is always shocking to hear about such a tragedy, and even more so when you have been going about your daily business just a few hundred metres away from an area where such violence has been perpetrated unheard and unseen.

The Women's Legal Service (SA) is a not-for-profit organisation that provides free legal information, advice, assistance, representation, and community legal education to vulnerable groups of women in South Australia. They regularly support women who experience violence at the hands of an intimate partner. They are also integral participants in our community discussion about how we can prevent domestic violence.

In October last year, the member for Bragg and I had the pleasure of attending their AGM and being part of a panel discussion on how we can work together and what legal reforms are needed to stop death due to domestic violence. Just last week, the service met with a number of women parliamentarians and women members of the Vietnamese parliament and Vietnamese Women's Union to discuss our role in the global challenge we face of ending violence against women.

The service provides a safety net to our community, with over 2,500 advice sessions per year and around 300 open files. They exist to provide services for women who, because of the difficulty of their cases or their financial situation, are unable to pay for appropriate representation. Fifty per cent of women who access the services of the Women's Legal Service are affected by domestic violence, and that number is even higher amongst the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander clients.

This service is staffed by incredibly dedicated and, frankly, amazing workers, including the phenomenal Zita Ngor, who is their executive officer. Zita and other staff are literally at the coalface of domestic violence, providing advice in areas such as intervention orders, tenancy, and child protection, with a great deal of compassion and understanding. The service's ongoing ability to deal with these matters, along with Victims of Crime compensation, is at serious risk due to funding cuts expected by the federal government.

In yet another attack on our most vulnerable, the Abbott government has made wide sweeping cuts to federal legal aid which could result in the service losing up to 48 per cent of its funding. The service exists through the provision of funding from the commonwealth Attorney-General's Department and the office of the Prime Minister and cabinet, funding which is currently seriously at risk. If these cuts are implemented, they will severely limit the work the Women's Legal Service can do on behalf of vulnerable South Australian women and result in a serious loss to our community, to the many other services with whom they interact and, in particular, to women whose voices are not always heard in our legal system.

The Women's Legal Service prioritises assistance to women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, and women living in rural, regional and remote areas of South Australia—the very women who are least heard in our society. In doing so, the Women's Legal Service is the service that provides a voice to this group. The service would need to drastically cut services if the potential funding cuts of between 30 to 48 per cent were realised. The services that will be cut will result in an inability to visit rural, regional and remote areas of South Australia, including the APY lands, Nepabunna, Coober Pedy, Mount Gambier and Ceduna. In some areas, such as the APY lands and Coober Pedy, they are the only provider of consistent civil law services.

This year the Women's Legal Service will celebrate its 20th birthday. It should be a year of celebration, but instead I fear it may be a year of mourning. I urge every member in this place with any capacity to influence our federal government around these cuts to speak and to act however they can to ensure that this service is able to continue to provide essential support at the most difficult of times to some of the most vulnerable women in our community.

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