I refer to the article by Patrick Lunn that was published in The Mercury on Wednesday 10th August 2016.

The article set out all the good work Legal Aid does in Tasmania and that was quite true but it is not the whole truth.

To understand the whole truth one must go back into some recent history.

Legal Aid was established in Australia by Lionel Murphy when he was Attorney General in the Whitlam Labor Government.

When it was first introduced anyone who met the means test would get Legal Aid and that person’s lawyer would be paid 80% of the scale fee.

The scale fee is the fee that the Courts set when assessing how much money a losing party should pay the winner to compensate the winner for the winner’s legal costs.

Most lawyers were happy to accept Legal Aid because you could make a profit on that particularly since you got a guarantee of payment so the risk factor for the lawyer was taken out.

A succession of right wing government gradually reduced funding so now we have reached a stage in which no Legal Aid is available for any civil matter.

So somebody who is injured by another person’s carelessness or even intentionally or by any other wrong doing, can’t get any compensation from the wrongdoer because they can’t afford the $30,000 it would take to litigate the matter.

Their only hope would be to find a lawyer who would take the case on a no win no fee basis which is a service offered by members of the Australian Lawyers Alliance.

So now days only pensioners can get Legal Aid and only for family law matters involving children and for criminal matters which involve a serious risk of imprisonment for the accused if the accused is found guilty.

The rate of pay of Legal Aid is half the Court Scale and a third of the scale that most practitioners now charge.

So it is difficult to even break even if you accept any Legal Aid work unless you can find some way of cutting corners and doing a lot of matters because Legal Aid pays a set fee so if you can work the system you might make a living out of you are lucky.

But obviously the Legal Aid service is severely degraded and in practice if you’re a pensioner your chances of getting good legal representation is very low.

The Turnbull Liberal government intends to cut Legal Aid to community legal centres by 30% in next year’s budget; which will make a bad situation worse.
JOHN GREEN LLB Retired Lawyer