Save community legal centres: End the funding crisis​

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Community legal centres help hundreds of thousands of people every year to resolve everyday legal problems in areas like housing, relationships, debts and money problems, and discrimination. People trust their local community legal centre to support them early, before legal problems snowball to crisis point.

Community legal centres (including Women's Legal Services) and Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services (FVPLSs) also play a crucial role preventing and responding to domestic and family violence. Frontline family law and family violence services make up the largest areas of work for many of the 160+ centres across Australia.

Right now, a funding and workforce crisis is putting community legal centres’ vital work at risk.

The 2024 Federal Budget failed to provide the urgent funding boost and long-term funding security the community legal sector desperately needs.

With less than a year’s guaranteed funding left, community legal centres are in the most precarious position they have seen in a decade. Right now, centres across the country are turning away over a thousand people a day who need help. Right now, they are being forced to make difficult decisions about which programs and outreaches to cut back, which workers to let go, and when to close their books.

Every day that passes without a response to this crisis puts the people who rely on community legal centres to stay safe, housed, and financially secure at even greater risk.

People experiencing poverty and disadvantage deserve to feel certain that the community legal centres they rely on will continue to exist beyond July 1, 2025.

We call on governments to step up and deliver fair funding for community legal centres:

1. $35 million this year to address the workforce crisis facing community legal centres. We need this urgent investment recommended by the NLAP review to stabilise our workforce and maintain service delivery at current levels.

2. At least $270 million per year for community legal centres from 1 July 2025, committed by December 2024: With double the Commonwealth funding currently in the service system, all community legal centres can start to help more of the 368,000 people per year currently turned away. Announcing the total Commonwealth investment in community legal centres under the next five-year funding agreement by December 2024 will mean community legal centres can focus on helping people, and not be forced to spend precious time and energy planning for redundancies and service closures.

3. $95 million for frontline domestic and family violence work. This is the investment required to enable all community legal centres to meet demand for legal assistance services and holistic support from victim-survivors of domestic and family violence

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​Community Legal Centres Australia represents over 160 organisations nationally, including place-based or “generalist” community legal centres, specialist community legal centres (including 13 Women’s Legal Services), 11 Family Violence Prevention Legal Services (FVPLSs), and 2 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (ATSILSs). This statement outlines the funding needs of community legal centres. We support calls from national FVPLS and ATSILS peak bodies, First Nations Advocates Against Family Violence and the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, for fair funding for the Aboriginal community-controlled services they represent.