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EDUCATION WEEK & CATHOLIC EDUCATION WEEK FEATURE INSIDE THIS ISSUE
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The SEN team of Craig Hutchison, Campbell Brown and Liam Pickering at Moe Racing Club with Margaret Bell, 91, who had her first taste of owning a racehorse in Margaret’s Banter, who debuted at the Valley track on Tuesday. FULL STORY - SPORT
BUDGET PLEA AN Aboriginal legal service is imploring the state government to fund a dedicated Morwell hub in today’s state budget to provide high-quality legal services and culturally appropriate, holistic support. The Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) is calling on Labor Member for Eastern Victoria Harriet Shing to back a proposal to expand its legal services in the Latrobe Valley. A Morwell VALS hub office would include a criminal lawyer, a civil lawyer, a family lawyer, a legal secretary, and two community support officers.
There is no full time VALS service in the Latrobe Valley, yet there was a 30 per cent increase in demand for its services in Morwell in the past year. VALS statewide community justice program leader Lee-Ann Carter said staff were travelling from Melbourne to meet the needs of the Valley. Ms Carter said the pandemic has driven up demand for services and created a backlog through the courts. She said more resources would help clear this backlog and reduce the number of Aboriginal people locked in the criminal justice system. “We are extremely under-resourced
and stretching resources across the state is not an ideal situation,” Ms Carter said. VALS chief executive officer Nerita Waight said the $26.5 million needed to deliver this service at six hubs across regional Victoria over four years would be less than the cost of imprisoning 56 people in that time. “Demand for Aboriginal legal services has almost doubled in some regions after the COVID pandemic. Our lawyers have caseloads of more than 100 matters at any given time,” Ms Waight said. “Aboriginal people already have the solutions. We now need investment to deliver these solutions.”
The number of Aboriginal people detained in the state’s prison system has almost doubled since 2014, and there has been several Aboriginal deaths in custody in Victoria this year. VALS first proposed this support model to the state government several years ago, but it had not been funded in last year’s budget. Ms Shing said she had been advocating for an increase in dedicated legal support for the Gippsland Aboriginal community. She said she had taken the issue up with the Victorian Attorney-General and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs.
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