Federal Budget cuts to community legal centres
In the week of the May Federal Budget, community legal centres learned of several decisions they say will cut free legal help and further reduce access to justice.
Fifty seven centres across Australia have been told they will lose funding in 2015–16 and 2016–17. These cuts represent a funding loss in each of those years of around $6 million and will affect the last two years of four-year funding agreements signed by the former government. This funding has been used to open new outreach offices, provide new family violence duty lawyer services, extend advice clinics for the homeless and deliver other, much needed frontline services.