14 April 2010

The Green plan for Access to Justice

| johnboy
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Access to justice is incredibly important.

The social inequality is already huge. Those who can afford to pay a lawyer can often bully their way to outcomes far beyond their legal entitlement with a series of confusing formal looking letters.

Those who can afford the right lawyers often get off scot free in criminal matters while the less fortunate end up with ruined lives.

So it’s interesting to see the Greens launching a five point plan to close the gap.

The points are:

    Action 1 2010/11 Budget funding to secure: (i) a permanent Indigenous Liaison Officer; and (ii) establishment of a Mental Health Legal Centre
    Action 2 Urgent location of short term office space to meet the present needs of the three CLCs [Community Legal Centres] co-located at Havelock House
    Action 3 Quantify unmet legal need in the ACT and develop a funding plan to close the gap
    Action 4 Implement the funding plan by establishing an ACT Community Legal Services Program
    Action 5 Commit in the 2012/13 budget to securing an ACT Community Legal Centre Hub to house CLCs.

Your thoughts dear readers?

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ACT has a Legal Aid centre already, I am not convinced that further triplication of existing services (and wasting of finite monetary resources on the necessary administrative overheads) would suit anyone’s goals.

Why not streamline existing services into an already existant organisation (Gershon style), stop wasting everyone’s money on overheads like rent, power, infrastructure etc for multiple organisations and focus expenditure on client service in one service?

As for an indigenous liason officer, how about just respecting the culture instead of paying lip service to it occasionally?

Of course he must have – or Katy has – why else would the Greens be taking such a public stand. All in the name of pseudo-differentiation, too.

Deadmandrinking12:13 pm 14 Apr 10

Well-needed!

Is this included in their agreement with the ALP?

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