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Remote, rural and regional issues

Consultations for this study indicated that there are even less affordable legal services available in rural and regional areas than elsewhere.⁸⁶ This is supported by the Senate Legal and Constitutional References Committee:

One of the major barriers to access to justice is the fact that large geographical areas in Australia are not covered by legal aid or free legal services.⁸⁷

In addition, where services do exist, they may not have the capacity or funding to take on clients with more complex needs. In country towns throughout NSW, Legal Aid pays local solicitors to do legal aid work for the local population. One solicitor commented that because many of these solicitors are running their own business as well as doing legal aid work, they may not feel they are adequately compensated for the time it takes to work with clients with a mental illness, who may need more time and support than other clients.⁸⁸ CLC workers from Women’s Legal Services NSW (WLS) also commented:

If you have a client who has a mental illness and they need constant reassurance, or they need to be in constant contact over certain things … it can actually turn solicitors off doing Legal Aid work, which means that in rural areas, there are less and less solicitors. Some towns have no solicitor that does Legal Aid work at all, and there is no Legal Aid office there, so it just means that people getting access to Legal Aid is hard enough.⁸⁹

A lack of accessible local legal services may therefore mean that people with a mental illness living in rural and regional areas face additional barriers to accessing legal services, including having to travel long distances to obtain legal advice. It was indicated that the organisation and motivation required to travel large distances to attend appointments is often beyond the capacity of someone who is mentally unwell.⁹⁰ This is compounded by both the cost of travel and the lack of available regular public transport in rural and regional areas.⁹¹

In addition, one regional CLC worker suggested that often, people with a mental illness need to access a lawyer immediately, as they may not have the capacity to plan ahead. This CLC worker argued that this can be a problem for people living in rural and regional areas who do not have a lawyer based in their town:

I think the main barrier is it being available right when they need it. I think people that suffer from a mental illness require the assistance when they need it. And that is a great difficulty in terms of the provision of legal services, because there just isn’t a solicitor that is based in Bourke that will assist people and be there all the time … So you have to wait a fortnight to get an appointment, and often in a fortnight things could have completely changed.⁹²

Accessing telephone-based legal services is an option for people with a mental illness living in rural and regional areas. However, as discussed earlier in this chapter, communication difficulties can be made worse over the phone, and it was therefore suggested that people with a mental illness tend to prefer communicating face-to-face with solicitors.⁹³

In recognition of the lack of available legal services in rural and regional areas, Legal Aid is trialling the Cooperative Legal Service Delivery Model. The aim of this model is to organise coalitions of legal services (including government, private, community and quasi-legal service providers) to work together to identify gaps in service delivery, develop service delivery priorities, and develop a referral network in the area to better assist disadvantaged people to access legal services.⁹⁴ A family law solicitor described the model:

We have a cooperative service delivery model operating out of Dubbo, which is trying to collaborate between the different sorts of agencies, so that people aren’t getting a run around.⁹⁵

Finally, a lack of available mental health services in rural and regional areas can mean that people with a mental illness have far less support and treatment options to assist them in stabilising their illness. This can further compromise their ability to access and use legal services, as discussed earlier.⁹⁶