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Women’s legal service left struggling after budget announcements
Legal services assisting women fleeing abusive relationships have been left struggling to cope with chronic underfunding after the federal budget failed to deliver any support.
Naomi Neilson
Prior to budget week, Women’s Legal Services Australia (WLSA) wrote to the Attorney-General requesting that an additional $25 million is needed to meet the overwhelming demand for family violence legal aid and support for the 40 per cent of women who are turned away. The recent federal budget announcement left them out.
“We are in an intolerable situation where we are forced to deny help to women because we don’t have the staff to help them,” Ms Fletcher said, adding that the women who do seek help are experiencing financial abuse, coercive control and physical assault.
“We know from decades of experience that without intervention, these behaviours can escalate into deadly violence. The budget was an opportunity to address the decades of chronic underfunding on life-saving legal services,” Ms Fletcher said.
While the federal budget injected $10.2 million to the Family and Federal Circuit Courts to manage the strain of increasing case volumes and COVID-19, there was no funding allocated to the legal services that represent and support the clients in these courts.
Ms Fletcher said politicians are happy to voice concern about the concerning statistics, but there is no “political will to remedy the situation”. She added that in the meantime, a disproportionate amount of federal community legal funding still makes its way to the organisations that represent the respondents and further drag victims through courts.
“Specialist women’s legal services are one solution that actually works,” she said. “We provide not just legal representation, but financial counselling, emotional support and access to social services; all supports women need to safety and extradite themselves and their children from dangerous situations.
“We will continue to engage with the government and demand our leaders step up and invest in solutions to address family violence. The queues of women in need will only grow, and so will the scourge of violence against women and children that remains our national shame.”
Naomi Neilson
Naomi Neilson is a senior journalist with a focus on court reporting for Lawyers Weekly.
You can email Naomi at:
