Frontline community legal centre workers are visiting Parliament on Wednesday to raise the alarm about the impact of the funding and workforce crisis on communities.

The visit follows reports that legal centres are being forced to turn away more than 1000 vulnerable people a day — including about 370 domestic and family violence cases.

The Albanese Government’s May budget failed to meet urgent recommendations of a recent review into the sector, which painted a stark picture of stretched services unable to meet growing community needs for legal help.

Dr. Warren Mundy’s independent review of the National Legal Assistance Partnership (NLAP) was handed to Attorney-General Drefyfus at the beginning of March this year. It recommended $215m of urgent funding for the 2024-2025 financial year to keep legal assistance services afloat before the new agreement commences in June 2025.

To date the government has provided no formal response to the review or clarity about funding going forward. The government only committed $44m for the legal assistance sector in the May budget – leaving a $171m shortfall – a decision that family violence prevention advocates, First Nations groups and the community legal sector say has left vulnerable people with nowhere to turn for help.

The sector says the funding shortfall and a lack of clarity about future funding has meant services are unable to retain staff, are forced to turn more vulnerable people away, and in many cases are closing altogether.

Legal centres are now calling on federal, state and territory governments to finalise a new agreement by the end of the 2024, to give the sector certainty to retain their workforce and plan for ongoing service delivery.

In July, ahead of the Standing Council of Attorneys-General (SCAG) meeting, Senator Thorpe led a group of 28 crossbenchers, who together wrote to the country's Attorneys-General calling them to fill the funding gap.

At their July meeting, SCAG deferred their discussion of NLAP to a standalone meeting, which is scheduled to take place in September.

Senator Thorpe says governments must take this opportunity to commit to urgent, overdue funding that will provide much-needed help to the most vulnerable, including women and children experiencing family violence, and First Peoples.

“Labor has been talking a big game about helping women and children experiencing family violence, but their failure to fund these services show they’re not taking the crisis seriously."

“Right now over 50,000 women are being turned away from these life-saving services each year, and are being put in danger."

“And First Peoples across the country are being denied access to legal services – this is leaving families vulnerable to violence and child removal, and leading to further criminalisation of our people, risking further deaths in custody.”

“How can Albanese say he wants to close the gap while withholding crucial funding from these frontline services?”

“The government must act now. Every day they delay, more people are being denied justice and put in danger.”

“The government has had this report for six months, and they still haven’t discussed it properly with the states, responded to its recommendations, or given any clarity to the sector. All while more women, children and First Peoples are being turned away from help.”

“Ahead of the previous funding agreement in June 2020, the Morrison government provided three years’ funding certainty in the forward estimates of the 2019 budget. Even the Liberals knew it would be a crisis to leave the sector with no clarity.”

“But Albanese has failed to do what Morrison did. It shows how much worse Labor has been than the Coalition was on this, and the Coalition was bad!”

“This shameful time-wasting and neglect from Labor is costing lives. They need to hurry up and do something.”