Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I am also interested in further implications for the legal assistance sector, again, by removing any possibility that a court could assess that it is appropriate in some cases to allow a person's own restrained assets to be used to defend them in a court under our rule of law. The Victoria Legal Aid submission indicates that directing persons exposed to unexplained wealth proceedings into the taxpayer funded legal aid scheme would certainly expose legal aid commissions to greater administrative burden as they take up more of a role in claims and cost management of these matters. That is because they are potentially protracted and complex proceedings. These would also be for a class of client who Victoria Legal Aid would not typically consider to be a priority client. Again I ask: has the government considered the implications of this and has there been any modelling as to what the likely effect of removing any judicial discretion in this way will have?