Government Responds to Productivity Commission Access to Justice Report
Tuesday 3 May 2016 @ 1.32 p.m. | Crime | Judiciary, Legal Profession & Procedure | Legal Research
On 29 April 2016, in a Media Release, the Federal Government Attorney General George Brandis released the Government's response to the Productivity Commission's Access to Justice Report (The Report). The Report, delivered on 3 December 2014, included 83 recommendations to improve accessibility to the civil justice system.
Background to the Review
As mentioned in our previous TimeBase Article, in conducting the inquiry the Commission was to have regard to the following:
- the real costs of legal representation and trends over time;
- the level of demand for various legal services;
- factors contributing to the cost of legal representation in Australia;
- whether costs and charges for access to justice services and for legal representation are generally proportionate to the seriousness of the issues in dispute;
- the impact of costs of accessing justice services, and securing legal representation, on how effective these services are;
- economic and social impact of the costs of accessing justice services, and securing legal representation;
- impact of the structures and processes of legal institutions on the costs of accessing and utilising these institutions, including analysis of discovery and case management processes;
- alternative mechanisms to improve equity and access to justice and achieve lower cost civil dispute resolution, in both metropolitan areas and regional and remote communities, and the costs and benefits of these;
- reforms in Australian jurisdictions and overseas which have been effective at lowering the costs of accessing justice services, securing legal representation and promoting equality in the justice system; and
- data collection across the justice system that would enable better measurement and evaluation of cost drivers and the effectiveness of measures to contain these.
Government Response to Report Recommendations
The Productivity Commission's Report recommended improvements broadly covered in the areas of:
- Consumers lacking access to information about legal services;
- Big potential gains from early and informal solutions;
- Aspects of the formal system contributing to problems in accessing justice;
- Assisting the missing "middle" in terms of provision of legal services;
- Improving legal assistance services for disadvantaged people; and
- Evaluating and understanding how the system is functioning.
Of a total of 83 recommendations, the Government responded directly to 16 recommendations in their response to the report, in particular, focusing on:
- Provision of legal services to disadvantaged people;
- Funding of legal assistance services;
- Reforms to collect data and report on functioning of court systems;
- Court fees and cost recovery;
- Government agencies and organisations involved in dispute resolution should have accessible guidelines in place;
- Government subject to model litigant obligations;
- Examination of pro bono services;
- Restriction of cross-examination laws in matters of family violence; and
- Proposals to assist self-represented litigants.
As stated by the Attorney-General:
"Over the next five years, the Australian Government will provide $1.6 billion for legal aid commissions and community legal centres through the National Partnership Agreement and direct funding agreements with Indigenous legal assistance providers.
The Australian Government is committed to doing what it can to increase funding levels for legal assistance in a tight fiscal environment. This is demonstrated by the $15 million legal assistance component of the $100 million Women's Safety Package, and the restoration of $25.5 million in funding to the legal assistance sector.
In addition, the government:
- lead the development of a strategic framework, in collaboration with all states and territories and the legal assistance sector, to identify shared priorities for legal assistance services at all levels of government;
- funding the development of a legal health check tool to educate community workers to recognise legal problems early and assist disadvantaged people to receive appropriate legal assistance; and
- enabling the development of a National Legal Assistance Data Standards Manual, in consultation with the legal assistance sector, to gather consistent and comparable data across the sector and inform ongoing government policy."
Community Response to Government Released Report
According to Lawyers' Weekly, National Legal Aid described the government’s response to the report as “disappointing”, warning it would do little to narrow the justice gap facing struggling Australian families:
“[The Commission] recommended an immediate injection of $200 million p.a. into the legal assistance sector – with $120 million of that coming from the Commonwealth government.
The Commonwealth has not adopted that recommendation and, as a result, many disadvantaged Australians will continue to be denied proper access to legal assistance.”
The National Association of Community Legal Centres (NACLC) Chair Rosslyn Monro has also said the government’s National Partnership Agreement on Legal Assistance (NPA) initiative would also worsen access to justice barriers for ordinary Australians:
"Not only does the NPA compound the inequity in the access to justice for ordinary Australians between jurisdictions, it fails to provide a mechanism to agree appropriate arrangements for current and future government investment in essential community legal services.”
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