Representatives from community legal centres which provide advice to disadvantaged people, including women fleeing domestic violence, have expressed anger at comments made by the minister for women, Michaelia Cash.

Cash accused community legal centres on Thursday morning of running a “false and misleading campaign” about funding cuts given that in March the federal government halted funding cuts which were due to take effect on 1 July.

Instead, the government has not committed to renewing $12m in funding for the centres when the current agreement expires in 2017.

Cash was asked by the ABC’s Radio National program whether the federal government’s announcement of a broad range of family violence initiatives on Thursday morning would make up for the $12m in cuts due to hit community legal centres in less than two years.

“It concerns me that there continues to be a false and misleading campaign of misinformation,” Cash responded.

“It does disappoint me that there continues to be this myth perpetrated that there were funding cuts. The cuts never came into being. The former prime minister and I restored that money before the cuts came into effect.”

However, the cuts were largely halted because of a strong campaign from community legal centres and other frontline workers in the sector who were concerned that disadvantaged people, Indigenous people and those fleeing family violence would suffer if they took effect.

The chief executive of the Federation of Community Legal Centres, Liana Buchanan, said she was appalled by Cash’s comments that a “misleading campaign” had been run.



“To frank I was surprised and appalled to hear a government minister providing such false information to the public,” Buchanan told Guardian Australia.

“The bottom line is in the government’s national partnership agreement that the former prime minister signed in July this year. It is clear and explicit that funding for community legal centres will still be cut by $12m in 2017, so the funding will go from $42m in 2016-17 to $30m in 2017-18.”

Thursday’s funding announcement from Cash, the attorney general, George Brandis, and the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, did include $13.4m to create domestic violence units within specific legal centres. But Buchanan said only certain centres would benefit from that funding, so it would not offset the 2017 drop in funding.

“I hope Michaelia Cash and the prime minister can clarify for themselves what is in the government’s own funding agreement, and will work with us to address the funding cliff that we will fall off from 2017,” she said. “We want to work constructively with the government.”

Arc Justice’s chief executive, Peter Noble, who oversees the Loddon Campaspe community legal centre in Bendigo and the Goulburn Valley community legal centre, said it was Cash who was being misleading, not the legal centres.

The Goulburn centre received just $100,000 in federal funding every year, the lowest of any rural generalist service in Victoria, which would be halted from 2017.

“The Goulburn centre has been able to provide critical services to people going through the courts which will absolutely be jeopardised when this funding stops,” Noble said.

“I feel as though senator Cash is being misleading. The government has previously sought to explain that rather than actively cutting funds, they are simply letting funds lapse.

“Whichever way you look at it, $12m will come out of the budget of community legal centres nationally from July 2017. Whether you want to call it non-renewable funding or a cut, that doesn’t matter in my books, and it won’t matter to women in court who receive our help.”

Cash said she would continue to discuss with the sector what would happen with the funding after 2017.