Policy calls for 60:40 funding split over four years between commonwealth and the states

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

The Greens have called for a $1.59bn reform of the legal aid system, as part of their access to justice pre-election policies, including the reinstatement and increase to funding of environmental defenders offices and legal aid.

The Greens’ policy called for a 60:40 split with states, requiring $954m from the commonwealth and another $635m from states – over four years – to cover what the party said was the start of fully funding “access to justice for all people living in Australia”.

It includes $408m for community legal centres (CLCs), almost $300m for legal aid commissions, $118m for family violence prevention legal services, $97m for Indigenous legal services, and $16m each for Environmental Defenders Offices (EDOs) and legal assistance peak bodies.

The package also included an annual survey of people’s legal needs, and a royal commission into the family law system – an “urgent” request raised late last year by advocacy groups and backed by a cross-party alliance of senators.

Shorten promises cheaper childcare as Morrison pledges refugee intake freeze Read more

“The family law system in Australia is currently underfunded, overworked, and destructively adversarial in nature, and it’s just not getting the results parents and children need or deserve,” the party said.

The EDO funding policy is slightly higher than the Labor party’s commitment to restore $14m over four years to EDOs, and higher than its own previous policy of $14.5m.

“With escalating threats to our natural environment coming from cashed-up corporations, lobbyists, and the politicians in their pockets, fully-funded EDOs are needed now more than ever to defend the rights of communities to a healthy environment,” said the Greens.

Jo Bragg, solicitor and coordinator of EDOs Australia, welcomed the commitments by both parties to work towards restoring funding.

“The funding is needed so EDOs may provide legal services and access to justice for a wide range of Australians including community groups, conservation groups, rural landholders and Indigenous groups,” she told Guardian Australia.

“These services are urgently needed as our clients are faced with major environmental issues like protecting groundwater, protecting quality agricultural land, protecting nature, climate, and the Great Barrier Reef.”

The National Association of Community Legal Centres (NACLC) also welcomed the announcement, saying it addressed “the need for a significant injection of additional core funding” identified by the Productivity Commission.

“Community legal centres help hundreds of thousands of everyday people and people experiencing discrimination and disadvantage when they need it most every year,” said Nassim Arrage, NACLC’s chief executive.

“We are facing increasing demand for our help but are forced to turn away hundreds of thousands of people each year due to insufficient funding and lack of resources.”

CLCs assisted more than 200,000 people in 2017-18, but turned away about 170,000.

In March, just days after the government’s independent review recommended retaining it, the Coalition announced that it would abolish the Indigenous Legal Assistance Program (Ilap) and merge funding with mainstream legal services.

The Greens’ policy joined Labor in calling to reinstate Ilap, which funds frontline legal services and advocacy provided by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services. The peak body for those services, Natsils, had $4.8m earmarked in the Greens policy.

On Friday, Labor said it would provide more than $660m for family violence prevention and an extra $107m to address Indigenous Australians’ disadvantage in the justice system.

The announcement doubled the Coalition’s promise of an extra $328m over three years for family violence services, but sector representatives warned that it would be difficult to implement without more state involvement.

Morning mail election extra: Joyce and Palmer roll back the years Read more

In 2014, the federal government cut funding to CLCs, because “the budget was a train wreck”, according to the attorney general at the time, George Brandis.

The cuts came in direct contradiction to recommendations from the Productivity Commission that legal assistance services needed a $200m funding boost. Last year the Law Council of Australia’s Justice Project suggested that funding gap had grown to about $390m a year.

After widespread outrage, Brandis announced that he would not proceed with the cuts, except to the state-based EDOs, as he said there was limited funding that should go to “case work rather than causes”, prompting accusations he had misunderstood the role of EDOs.

The federal government continues to oppose their federal funding. In February, the resources minister, Matt Canavan, called for the NSW branch’s state funding to be pulled, accusing it of being an “anti-development organisation” that had been “weaponised by taxpayers’ funds”, using the courts to delay “legitimate job-creating opportunities”.

He said he had “never seen an example” of EDOs defending the environment and suggested that they should be “doing practical environment work to repair riverbanks or protect koalas”.

The Productivity Commission’s 2014 report said that in the previous five years “no cases in which EDO offices were engaged have been dismissed on the basis that the case was frivolous or vexatious”.