A crisis in funding for Legal Aid is preventing Australia's most disadvantaged from obtaining a lawyer, the ACT Law Society has said.
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Lawyers will rally on Wednesday in support of a national "Legal Aid Matters" campaign, which seeks to put pressure on the major parties to commit to reversing cuts and injecting new money into services ahead of the federal election.
Successive federal governments have cut hundreds of millions of dollars from legal aid services, placing them under significant pressure across all states and territories, including the ACT.
In 2014, the Productivity Commission recommended that $200 million a year in interim funding was needed to fill service gaps.
"Advocating for increases in funding (however modest) in a time of fiscal tightening is challenging," the commission said in its report.
"However, not providing legal assistance in these instances can be a false economy as the costs of unresolved problems are often shifted to other areas of government spending such as health care, housing and child protection."
ACT Law Society president Martin Hockridge said the system of legal aid was now at a point where most Australians who could not afford a lawyer "simply won't get one".
He said the provision of legal aid went to "the heart of Australia's notion of fairness", and helped determine the kind of society Australians wanted.
"Is it one in which everyone has access to justice – or only those who can afford a lawyer?" he said.
Last month, Attorney-General George Brandis made a statement responding to the Productivity Commission's report, saying the government was committed to doing what it could to increase funding "in a tight fiscal environment".
"This is demonstrated by the $15 million legal assistance component of the $100 million Women's Safety Package, and the restoration of $25.5 million in funding to the legal assistance sector," he said.
The government funded data-collection tools, a framework for identifying shared priorities for services across states and territories, and the development of a "legal health check tool" to help community workers recognise legal problems early and help disadvantaged Australians receive "appropriate legal assistance".
The Walk for Legal Assistance Funding begins on Wednesday at 8am at the CLC Hub, 21 Barry Drive in Turner.
It will feature speeches from Canberra Community Law executive director Genevieve Bolton, ACT Legal Aid chief executive officer John Boersig, and former Productivity Commissioner Dr Warren Mundy, who oversaw the report.
The walk will end at the ACT Supreme Court building.
