Report on law in Australia affecting the legal status of the aboriginal indigenous peoples and other poverty-stricken of socially disadvantaged individuals - comments on availability of legal aid for the poor, examines the legal situation of the poor with regard to tenancy, consumer credit and indebtedness, social security, criminal law and court procedures affecting children, etc., and includes recommendations. References.

Thinking about Poverty provides a critical understanding of poverty in the global context: how global structures affect people in Australia and the way policy-makers respond. In the midst of waning public interest, the book fills an important gap in the current public discourse on poverty and covers:the extent of poverty and unprecedented wealth and income inequality across the world, including Australia;why neoliberalism remains at the heart of mainstream global discourse and continues to shape public policy;how a deregulated and speculative global economy creates massive private and public debt, undermining the real economy, employment and wage growth;why neoliberalism still influences national governments to implement further privatisation, deregulation and other neoliberal policies which implement corporate tax cuts, and re-distribution of wealth and income upwards, while at the same time reducing welfare provisions that exacerbate poverty, social disadvantage and inequality;the pivotal role and importance of the welfare state to alleviate some of the excesses of neoliberal capitalism;individualised and structural theories that try to explain the existence of poverty;mainstream and alternative poverty definitions which are not based solely on economic measurements; andthe impact of public policy on various groups, including Aboriginal people, the unemployed, the mentally ill, older Australians, people with disabilities, women and families.Thinking about Poverty argues that the quality of any society must be judged by its values and norms; that without a just and decent moral code, humanity is unlikely to be able to survive the social, economic and political challenges ahead. Having large numbers living in deprived conditions, while a few live in extraordinary luxury is clearly not just - nor is it morally defensible. The book therefore concludes that political leaders are liable to lose the legitimacy to govern if they continue the current course of governing for a chosen few rather than for the overall common good.Not just a critique, Thinking about Poverty puts forward a range of policy strategies and alternative economic thinking. With contributions from academics and practitioners, the book makes a contemporary and accessible contribution to discourse about poverty in Australia.Contributors: Robert Bland, Andreas Cebulla, Benno Engels, Sue Green, Paul Harris, Ilan Katz, Helen Kimberley, Sonia Martin, Ruth Phillips, Eric Porter, David Rose, Klaus Serr, Karen Soldatic, Ben Spies-Butcher, Frank Stilwell and David Sykes.

The publication of the Poverty Commission's Law and Poverty in Australia Report (the Sackville Report) in 1975 was a landmark event in the history of Australian law reform. Since that time, and as Australia has become a more unequal society, there has been no systematic overview of the inter-relation between law and poverty in Australia. This book attempts to fill the gap by bringing together a range of experts from civil society, the legal profession and academe, including the disciplines of law, social science and criminology.The book provides an inventory of progress made over the past four decades with regard to the many proposals contained in the original Law and Poverty Report. The overall conclusion is that the scorecard is uneven. Substantial implementation of the reforms has occurred in many areas, such as consumer and tenancy law. Despite initial progress in other areas, such as tax law, legal aid and social security, there has been deterioration. It also highlights some important aspects of poverty and law not contained in the original Report: the intersection of the experiences of LGBTI people, poverty and law; the international dimension of law and poverty in light of globalisation; and the critical importance of tax rules in relation to poverty. The book concludes by identifying critical areas for reform to address the legal problems that poor people confront. They include: cuts to legal aid and community legal centre funding; security of tenure for residential tenants; redistribution of the tax burden; regulation of the power of government agencies, such as social security and the police; and greater security in the sphere of employment law.In the media...Justice Ronald Sackville, Vicki Sentas, Professor Brendan Edgeworth and Scarlet Wilcock on ABC Radio National, Law Report with Damien Carrick_16 May 2017 Listen to interview...Law and Poverty in Australia: 40 years after the Poverty Commission, Inside UNSW Law, Issue 3, 2017_19 May 2017 Read article...

pp. 105-16; Australian Legal Aid Office.

"The Legal Australia-Wide Survey (LAW Survey) provides the first comprehensive quantitative assessment across Australia of an extensive range of legal needs on a representative sample of the population. It examines the nature of legal problems, the pathways to their resolution, and the demographic groups that struggle with the weight of their legal problems." -- Law and Justice Foundation of N.S.W. website.

This report draws on more than a decade of empirical research evidence - together with current experience of service providers - to inform the design and delivery of efficient and effective legal assistance services.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the modern Australian legal aid system. It charts the twists and turns of policy and practice over the past 30 years with a particular focus on:the reaction of the legal profession to conflicts and debates about legal aid policy and services and the way in which this has both reflected and accentuated major shifts in the social and political structure of the profession itself; the development of community legal centres from radical fringe organisations to accepted legal practices, which provide a 'value for money' service and work in alliance with the big city firms; the constancy of government calls for fiscal restraint and the recurrent lack of clear objectives despite widely varying approaches by different administrations.