Legal aid celebrates 40 years
The Australian Legal Aid Office, the precursor to Legal Aid, was set up 40 years ago to help people who couldn't afford a lawyer. But those working in the sector say the aim of free and equal legal representation for all has not entirely been realised because federal and state funding hasn't kept up with demand.
MARK COLVIN: It's 40 years since the Whitlam government set up the Australian Legal Aid Office to provide free legal support for people who couldn't afford a lawyer.
When that government fell in 1975, the national office disappeared and was divided into state-based bodies.
Today, the Federal Government announced a $30 million funding increase for legal aid and extra funding for community and Indigenous legal services.
But those working in the sector say that, over the past four decades, they've seen funding decline and they can't provide legal representation to many who need it most.
Jennifer Macey reports.
JENNIFER MACEY: When the-then federal attorney-general Lionel Murphy was setting up the Australian Legal Aid Offices in 1973, he said he wanted people to be able to access free legal help as easily as going to a mechanic.
After the dismissal of the Whitlam government, the National Legal Aid office was split into state commissions. But the out-going attorney-general told PM in 1975 that it was one of his finest achievements.
LIONEL MURPHY: It gave me the chance to do an enormous amount of constructive work, and the establishment of the Legal Aid Office - which I think will be a very great benefit to the large section of our people who've not been able to get the legal assistance they should have.
JENNIFER MACEY: The current Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus says the idea behind the shopfront offices was ambitious and sometimes novel.
MARK DREYFUS: The department found for me a pamphlet that was published in the Australian Women's Weekly in July 1975. It boasted that the first in the world - a dial-a-lawyer service - was being operated out of Burney, Tasmania, and of course there was talk at the time of a flying lawyer service to match the flying doctor service.
JENNIFER MACEY: To mark the 40th anniversary the Attorney-General announced an increase in Federal Government funding of $30 million over two years for legal aid commissions.
He also put $33 million over four years towards community legal centres and $12 million over two years for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services.
MARK DREYFUS: There was a very major cut by the Howard government in its first full budget in 1997 to the Commonwealth contribution to legal aid, and I have to in fairness say we have not yet returned the Commonwealths contribution to that level despite some very major increases in the last few years.
JENNIFER MACEY: Hugh de Kretzer is the national spokesman for the National Association of Community Legal Centres.
He says it's estimated that every year half a million people miss out on legal help, and the community sector wants Federal Government funds doubled.
HUGH DE KRETZER: Your typical legal case can cost tens of thousands of dollars. The chief justice of the Supreme Court of Western Australia has said that big business can access the courts but the ordinary Australian can't, and for most Australians that's the reality.
JENNIFER MACEY: Hugh de Kretzer says state governments have also put the squeeze on legal aid by changing the definition of who qualifies.
HUGH DE KRETZER: To qualify for a grant of assistance from a legal aid commission you basically have to have a poverty level line income and you have to be facing serious crime, facing imprisonment, or have a family law dispute affecting kids, not affecting property.
And because of increasing demand, legal aid commissions have been forced to restrict their guidelines to ration and exclude even more people.
JENNIFER MACEY: Christopher Boundy is the manager of Access Services at South Australia's legal aid commission.
He says part of the problem is that both civil and criminal cases have become much more complex over the past 40 years.
CHRISTOPHER BOUNDY: These days there may be many, many days worth of prosecution evidence that might relate to phone taps or specialist scientific evidence that wasn't available, utilised or necessary 20 years ago, and in order to be fair to defendants, all that evidence must be carefully scrutinised.
So it's the sheer size and complexity that is making things more expensive, and the more expensive they become the less able people are to see their way through it.
JENNIFER MACEY: All acknowledge that 40 years on, Lionel Murphy's vision that everyone has equal representation before the law still hasn't quite been achieved.
MARK COLVIN: Jennifer Macey.