George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you very much, Senator Peris, for that question. What I can tell you is that legal assistance in Australia is the subject of a current review. The three principal bases upon which the Commonwealth delivers legal assistance—through payments to the state and territory legal aid commissions, through payments to the community legal centres and through payments to the ATSILs—are all under review. I can also tell you, Senator Peris, that one of the first decisions that I made as Attorney-General in the access to justice area was to give an instruction that all of the Commonwealth's contribution to legal assistance should be concentrated on casework, so that that proportion of the Commonwealth's legal assistance that was spent on what is sometimes known as policy work or advocacy work—or the work of, for example, environmental defenders' organisations; so-called—which was diverted from casework, should all be concentrated and focused on casework. That said—and I hope you might even agree with me about this, Senator Peris—it seems to me that in an arena where resources are limited, and where the demand for those resources outstrips the supply of those resources, the just thing to do is to concentrate 100 per cent of the expenditure of those resources on the people who need it most. And that is what I have done.

But that said, Senator Peris, you know—everybody in Australia should know—that when the Abbott government was elected nearly a year ago, we had to find savings because the previous government had wasted so much public money. And unfortunately the legal aid assistance programs had to bear some of those savings—(Time expired)