Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2025-2026
Ms LAWRENCE (Hasluck) (16:52): Legal assistance is essential to ensuring access to justice and equality before the law, especially for vulnerable people facing disadvantage. The Albanese Labor government understands this, and I'm really pleased that, through the advocacy of our Attorney-General, the Albanese government will be investing $3.9 billion in support for frontline legal services, to be delivered over the next five years through the National Access to Justice Partnership.
This new partnership with the states and territories commenced on 1 July this year. I was delighted to learn that this is the biggest single Commonwealth investment in legal services ever. I was even more delighted to learn that every part of the legal assistance sector will benefit from this new agreement.
This includes the legal aid commissions, community legal centres, women's legal services, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services and family violence prevention legal services. In my electorate of Hasluck, we are lucky to have many organisations providing these vital supports to our community. One of these is the Midlas community legal centre.
Based in Midland, Midlas provides legal assistance to the north-eastern Perth region. I meet with Angie Perkins, the CEO, on a regular basis, to talk about their work and to learn about the pressures that they are seeing in our community. Midlas has been providing legal assistance to the people of Perth for over three decades, and they are in a unique position to judge the challenges and the needs of people under stress.
They talk to me about the challenges they face, not just with individual cases but with attracting and retaining staff, and about their caseloads and the importance of what they do to support some of those most vulnerable in our community. Minister, community legal centres help some of our most vulnerable, and there are almost 200 community legal service centres operating across Australia.
They provide the legal assistance and other advice to some of the most vulnerable in our community. Importantly, they are at the front line of working on prevention, particularly for those facing financial stress or having concerns about their status within their home where they may be renting as to understanding their legal rights. I think that preventive effort can't be underestimated in terms of its power in preventing escalation to, ultimately, what we see as violence.
To that end, women who have escaped a violent partner can, with assistance, move on with their life safely. This is the kind of scenario that support services like Midlas provide. They also provide support to the older person who is being helped to address abuse from a relative and to the person who is being rehoused after being unfairly evicted.
They have supported young people who have sought assistance to address mounting debt from unpaid fines. All of these people would agree that community legal centres are changing lives; they've changed their lives. We know that they're just one part of the legal assistance sector.
Domestic violence support services have also received further support. Domestic violence is a scourge that this government has been active in addressing and one that we must continue to hold in the light so that over time its incidence can be reduced. I'm proud to have initiated the DV Safe Phone program in my electorate office, where we've already received a steady flow of phones from constituents who understand the need and are happy to assist.
There are more than 22 million unused phones in people's desks and drawers, and the more that offices of MPs and senators, at both the federal and state level, can be places where people can easily drop off those phones the better. The DV Safe Phone program repurposes used phones so that DV survivors can access communications in situations where they can't use their old phones.
I've been amazed and honestly genuinely grateful for the response from my own constituents who have rallied to this cause and from the many federal members across the political spectrum who have joined in the effort in their own electorates. They are making a difference, and Midlas have reported to me that being able to have phones that they can provide to those who are fleeing domestic violence has been life changing.
An investment by government to combat domestic violence, of course, does make a difference. The work of our government is proving its worth. But, Minister, my question is: how will the National Access to Justice Partnership help reform the legal assistance sector, and, by extension, how does it help our community?