Current Policy Priorities

 

In consultation with community legal centres and other sector organisations, we work across a range of important law reform and advocacy campaigns.

Keep reading below for detailed information about a variety of policy issues.

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Aboriginal justice
Supporting and promoting approaches to justice that invest in and empower Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities.
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Consent and sexual assault
Improving access to justice for victim-survivors of sexual assault and eradicating discriminatory structural power imbalances.
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Championing a strong sector
Ensuring that the community legal sector is able to adequately assist the people and communities in most need of legal assistance in NSW
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Victims Services
Improving the NSW victims support scheme to make it fairer for victim/survivors, including through increased recognition payments.

 

COVID-19

Community Legal Centres NSW and our member community legal centres have worked hard over the past few months to respond to the rapidly changing environment and new challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic.

  • To see advocacy resources developed by our member centres relating to COVID-19, click here.
  • To read our article outlining 9 urgent actions needed to address the social and economic impacts of COVID-19, click here.
  • To find out about the changes in demand for community legal centre services due to COVID-19, click here.

 

Other law reform priorities

  • Reduce the incarceration rates of Aboriginal people
    Through implementation of the recommendations of the Australian Law Reform Commission’s 2018 Pathways to Justice report, including reforms to the Bail Act, raising the criminal age of responsibility and adopting a justice reinvestment approach to the criminal justice system.

  • Supporting Justice Reinvestment and Change the Record
    At the heart of justice reinvestment is the idea that a safer society comes from building stronger communities, and that communities are best placed to identify which problems affect them the most and what strategies to try which might address these issues. The aim of Justice Reinvestment is to redirect funding away from prisons and into communities that have high rates of contact with the criminal justice system, through both community-led initiatives and state-wide policy and legislative reform.

  • Child care & protection
    Keeping families together and safe by providing access to justice and essential support services.

  • Fairer laws for people with debts
    Amend practices around debt recovery to ensure that people facing hard times are not further impacted by the system, including garnishing order notifications and defaulting suspensions.

  • Increasing access to justice for renters
    Ending the practice of landlords being able to evict tenants without cause, including people living in rented homes, boarding houses, residential parks and international student accommodation.

  • Improve laws regarding people with cognitive disabilities
    Changing the relationship of people with cognitive disabilities and the courts, particularly in relation to the imprisonment of people who are deemed unfit to plead, and whether people with apprehended violence orders are able to fully understand the conditions of the AVO.

  • Abortion law reform
    Safe access zones outside reproductive health clinics, decriminalising abortion, and including abortion in the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

  • Protecting human rights
    Enshrining basic and essential human rights in a formal framework, to inform legislation, policy and public education.

 

Cross-sector policy networks

Community Legal Centres NSW works closely with and supports the following organisations and campaign alliances to achieve strategic policy and law reform