Wednesday, 9 February 2022

Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service

Dr READ (Brunswick) (19:16): (6202) My adjournment is to the Attorney-General, and the action I seek is for the Attorney to commit to funding the first tranche of the VALS, the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service, expansion to provide service hubs in the priority areas of Mildura, Geelong, Latrobe, Shepparton, Bendigo and Frankston. The number of First Nations people in the Victorian prison system has increased at record levels since the Labor government came to power in 2014, and this has created unprecedented demand for culturally specific legal services. While the government has made eye-watering investments in prison capacity and police, the required increase in funding for culturally safe legal aid for Aboriginal people has not kept pace. VALS’s lawyers have been stretched to their limits providing tailored and complex services to hundreds of clients. A new sustainable funding model to support their work has never been more important.

Aboriginal Victorians are still grossly overrepresented in this state’s prisons compared to non-Indigenous Victorians, and this gap is widening. Aboriginal Victorians are still less likely to receive bail and more likely to be held on remand for offences that do not warrant jail. Aboriginal children are more likely to be held in solitary confinement in youth detention and to be damaged by this experience. The consequences are tragic. In recent years there have been multiple Aboriginal deaths in Victorian prisons. The coroner also reported a 75 per cent increase in Aboriginal suicides in the last year alone, of which engagement with the criminal justice system and recent release from custody is frequently a causal factor.

This government has implemented some positive initiatives: a legislated spent convictions scheme, investments in court-integrated services and the Yoorrook Justice Commission—but the success of these initiatives can only be achieved if culturally appropriate legal services are available to help First Nations communities make use of them. In an election year no doubt the focus of the government will be on funding announcements involving hard hats and hi-vis vests, but in this instance I ask the Attorney-General to commit to funding some of the more important things as well.