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$3.9bn NAJP announced, but concerns still remain
Despite attorneys-general agreeing to a new National Access to Justice Partnership described as the “largest investment from the Commonwealth in legal assistance ever”, concerns persist regarding whether the allocated funds will sufficiently guarantee access to justice for all Australians.
Grace Robbie
On 22 November, during the Standing Council of Attorneys-General (SCAG) meeting held in Melbourne, the attorneys-general reached an agreement on a new $3.9 billion National Access to Justice Partnership (NAJP) which is set to roll over over five years from 2025–26.
The newly established NAJP delivers a critical increase of $800 million for legal assistance in Australia, marking the Commonwealth’s “largest investment” to legal support services to date.
Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus stated how the increase in funding aligns with the federal government’s ongoing effects to ensure that “essential frontline services can operate more effectively and help the most vulnerable in our community, including people experiencing family, domestic and sexual violence”.
Dreyfus revealed that under the new agreement, the NAJP will provide:
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$558 million for community legal centres and $276 million for Women’s Legal Services, representing a 74 per cent increase over the previous agreement.
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$367 million for Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service, a 112 per cent increase from the Indigenous Advancement Strategy.
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$838 million for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, an increase of 64 per cent from the previous agreement.
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$1.785 billion for legal aid commissions, marking a 24 per cent funding boost.
The new NAJP agreement includes several key elements to address persistent challenges within the legal assistance sector. These elements include providing quarantine funding for various components of the sector, measures to mitigate pay disparity to enhance the retention of legal professionals, the indexing of funding to adapt to evolving economic conditions, the simplification of funding streams to alleviate administrative burdens, and the advancement of the objectives outlined in the National Agreement on Closing the Gap.
The implementation of this NAJP is scheduled to commence upon the current agreement’s expiration on 30 June 2025.
While the announcement of the new NAJP has been broadly welcomed, the Law Council of Australia has come forth and expressed its concerns that the funding increase, while significant, does not go far enough to meet the needs of vulnerable Australians.
“We are very pleased that legal assistance services now have the certainty of knowing the national agreement between jurisdictions on access to justice funding will continue beyond July next year and into the future, but we strongly believe this is a missed opportunity to make sure that all Australians in need can access timely legal assistance,” Law Council of Australia president Greg McIntyre said.
“Services across the country are having to turn people away because they are under-resourced. The necessary Commonwealth funding uplift was quantified by Dr Warren Mundy in his landmark Review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership and is estimated to be around $500 million a year.”
The president expressed how the council is “disappointed” with the NAJP agreement, noting that it doesn’t meet the recommended funding levels that have been suggested and fails to address critical concerns.
This includes “resourcing of legal aid commissions to expand current means testing arrangements and increase grants of legal aid, particularly for those areas where we know there is substantial unmet need, including family and civil law, employment law, consumer law, social security decisions and elder abuse”.
McIntyre also said: “We remain especially concerned about the flow-on effects of continued underfunding of the sector on the private legal profession, who undertake more than 70 per cent of legal aid-funded matters. Rates paid for such work are at unsustainably low levels, which is forcing lawyers out of being able to undertake this increasingly complex work.
“There is no access to justice without skilled individuals who are willing and able to deliver it. This will particularly impact access to justice for Australians living in rural, regional and remote parts of the country.”
