By Sue Boland
The federal and state governments are midway through a review of community legal centres (CLCs) throughout Australia. A key objective is to restrict CLCs' involvement in legal reform campaigns and prisoners' rights and force them to concentrate on providing legal aid services. CLCs have been thorns in the side of governments and the police.
The review of South Australian CLCs has been completed and implemented. Victoria's review has been completed but is yet to be implemented. In Queensland, a review has just been initiated, and in NSW a review is likely now the state election is over.
In Victoria, a campaign to prevent the review's recommendations being implemented has been launched. Catherine Gow from the Darebin Community Legal Centre told Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly the governments are proposing that 19 metropolitan CLCs close. They would be replaced with four regional legal services.
Gow points out: "The biggest number of CLCs to be closed are in the north and west, so working-class, ethnically diverse, low-income, high-unemployment communities are going to suffer the most ... Because our suburbs are so large, closing down the local centres will reduce people's access to CLCs."
The government wants to bring in eligibility criteria, Gow said. "At the moment, anyone who lives, works or studies in an area that has a community legal centre can access it. The review is recommending that only those with a health care card be able to use CLC services. That will massively diminish the number of people who can get access to free legal advice."
A lot of people on low incomes are not entitled to health care cards. Young people living at home, many people with disabilities, Aboriginal people, workers on low wages and older people who might own their home but have no income will be excluded.
The review is proposing that a centralised call centre be established with the regional structure. "We feel that's not very user-friendly", Gow said. "The government will underestimate the number of telephone calls that will come in, just like they did with Centrelink, where you can try for days and not get through. The person answering the calls is unlikely to have legal expertise, and so won't be able to make an appropriate referral.
"A lot of people who call us do not need legal advice, but need a financial counsellor or other services. There have been cases in Queensland, which has a centralised call system, where people have been directed to a legal centre 200 kilometres from where they live", she added.
Gow thinks funds will be sucked out of the new regional legal centres because of the proposal that each centre be headed by an executive director. She explained, "At the moment, most community legal centres are organised collectively".
Gow argues that the federal government wants to gut the CLC system. "The current model is a holistic one ... Instead, the government wants the focus to be on direct casework. Community development, advocacy, law reform and legal education will go unless they are self-funded.
"The government is pushing this agenda because CLCs have been strong critics of governments of all persuasions. They have been speaking out, challenging government policy, giving another perspective and arguing for the rights of people.
"The government thinks we're a pain in the arse because we run test cases in the public interest. Currently, we're fighting the state government and three private prisons to gain access to information on the private prisons. If we're not there to do that sort of work, nobody else will do it."
This new model for CLCs, Gow said, is "all about silencing dissent to make sure that those with money, power and resources are the ones who rule this system".