We won't overcome Indigenous disadvantage by cutting legal services
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Version 0 of 1. It will be a relief to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health services that the minister for Indigenous affairs has announced they will be funded for another three years. This is good news: community-controlled health services get the best health outcomes and employ the most Indigenous people. But the government’s announcement is coinciding with the cutting of funds in other areas that are also critical in overcoming Indigenous disadvantage – areas that also employ large numbers of Indigenous people. The announcement yesterday that the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (Natsils) will be closing because of funding cuts is very bad news for Indigenous communities across the country. It’s not like we didn’t know it was coming. In last year’s budget, $13.4m was cut from the budget of Aboriginal legal services, a 20% cut. Those cuts are starting to pinch now and Aboriginal legal services around the country are having to make difficult decisions on how to accommodate them. The cuts mean job losses, of course. And any suggestion that these cuts will not affect frontline services shows no appreciation of the reality in which legal services targeting marginalised groups are operating. Family violence centres, women’s legal centres, and community legal centres have all been cut. Legal Aid Commissions have also been cut. For Aboriginal services, this has been the death of a thousand cuts. Under the Howard government, cuts to Aboriginal Legal Aid were savage. Although there was an increase in funding under the subsequent Labor governments, it never returned pre-Howard levels. In 2008, recurrent funding of Aboriginal legal service providers was frozen, which meant a real cut of 6%, and resulted in reductions to family law and criminal law services. The justification was that these cuts were to ensure that Aboriginal legal services target their advocacy and policy work and shouldn’t result in job losses. But previous cuts meant that the services were already working on a shoestring and had already reduced the services they could offer their clients. Related: Indigenous jail population has risen due to cuts, Close the Gap committee says The most recent Productivity Commission report on the progress of “closing the gap” noted that justice outcomes for Aboriginal people continue to decline, with adult imprisonment rates worsening (a 57% increase in incarceration rates) and no change in high rates of juvenile detention and family and community violence. Dennis Eggington is a calmly spoken, hardworking advocate of Indigenous rights and has been the CEO of the WA Aboriginal Legal Service since 1995. He’s facing a $1.8m cut. He knew the cuts would mean job losses the moment they were announced. It was just too much money to take out of an organisation in which 75% of its funding is spent on salaries – of lawyers, field officers and court officers. I don’t envy him the choices he will have to make. Some of the employees of WA Aboriginal Legal Services working in remote areas such as Fitzroy Crossing are in a one-person office. Having to consolidate staff means that there is every likelihood that these important positions will be lost. These employees, who attend magistrates courts to represent people who would otherwise be on their own, not only provide a critical service in protecting the rights of the people they are representing in court, they become part of the fabric of these remote towns. It is an irony in an environment where jobs for Indigenous people are supposed to be a government priority. The NSW/ACT Aboriginal Legal Service has said it will have to look at the possibility of closing some regional offices, servicing some of the most disadvantaged people in the state. And while it is yet to be determined how many of the offices and which ones will shut, it seems pretty clear that this is a reduction on frontline services. In the Northern Territory, the Northern Australian Aboriginal Justice Association has had to suspend its family law services. This is in the face of the record levels of child removals and claims of a “new stolen generation”. It was given a one-off funding grant for civil and family services but this expires in 2015. Targeting advocacy, policy and educational support for cuts is short-sighted. These people, who work with Aboriginal clients day in and day out, are best placed to advocate, design education programs and propose reforms that will improve the way the system works for marginalised people. Investment in advocacy, policy and educational roles for Aboriginal legal services would have been an investment in long-term systemic change. Instead, there is a band-aid approach – with an increasingly shrinking band-aid. Aboriginal people in need of legal advice who are pushed off Aboriginal legal aid have to find alternatives from the women’s legal services, community legal services and Legal Aid. But these service are also having to cut their frontline and other support and education services. The cuts make it so much harder for disadvantaged Australians to access proper legal services and mean the gap between the sort of representation the rich can afford and the poor will receive will become much wider. These cuts are directed at the most vulnerable people in our society – Aboriginal people, women and children. These are the people who will get a second rate legal service. It’s a further unravelling of the safety net. |