Into the ‘Heart of Darkness’:  The Difficult Journey of Community Legal Centres during the COVID-19 Pandemic

By Benjamin Gallagher

I. INTRODUCTION

While researching this article my mind drew parallels between the situation community legal centres have found themselves in and the Joseph Conrad novella I had been reading, Heart of Darkness.

For the unacquainted, Heart of Darkness inspired the acclaimed film Apocalypse Now. It features sailor Charles Marlow recounting his wanderlust-driven riverboat journey into an unfamiliar and chaotic environment. Likewise, community legal centres have seen their own metaphorical ‘Heart of Darkness’, facing head-on the daunting COVID-19 pandemic and the chaotic changes it has brought to the West Australian economic, societal and judicial community.

Moreover, both COVID-19 and Heart of Darkness thematically deal with “affronts to humanity-at-large”. Today we have COVID-19 and it’s mortality through pestilence, whilst Heart of Darkness looks at a wicked colonial past and its associated mortality through racism, oppression and slavery (albeit the latter containing much, much more bloodshed throughout it’s history than the former). This article seeks to look at how community legal centres have dealt with the affront that is COVID-19.

II. COMMUNITY LEGAL CENTRES

Community legal centres are arguably an Australian invention, harking back to the ‘Aboriginal Legal Service’ founded in 1970 in Redfern (Pollock, 2008). Above all, they are characterised by their not-for-profit basis and aims to reduce societal, political and economic disparities by providing easy and equal access to legal information and representation. Moreover, community legal centres are notable for their strong volunteer basis, advocacy for law reform and experiments in ‘test case’ litigation, where they seek to obtain precedents on untested points of law that may benefit legally marginalised Australians.

Western Australia contains approximately 35 community legal centres (Citizens Advice Bureau, 2020). Half of these are either directly situated in or have outreach locations in regional, non-metropolitan Perth areas (Citizens Advice Bureau, 2020). This extensive regional service area is owed partly to the findings of the 2003 ‘Joint Review of Community Legal Centres’, calling for community legal centres in the “Gascoyne, Peel, Wheatbelt and West Kimberley” regionalities (JRCLC, 2003, p. 1).

Community legal centres also come in a variety of niches, such as the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia providing advice to indigenous first-nations peoples (Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia, 2018), to TenancyWA providing specialist legal advice and services to residential tenants (TenancyWA, 2020). This breadth of legal specialization has resulted in the ability of community legal centres to be “global in their approach, in that casework, community legal education, law reform, community development and lobbying are inter-related and feed off each other” within their respective legal fields and métiers (Schetzer, 1998, p. 254).

III. THE IMPACT OF COVID-19

With COVID-19’s arrival in Western Australia on an unassuming 21st of February 2020, politicians, businesses and more notably the judiciary scrambled to introduce varying preventative restrictions (Borrello, 2020). These ranged from the rather comical purchase limits on toilet paper after panic buying to the more serious suspension of jury-trials. The suspension of such trials sparked fears amidst the Australian legal community that “…delays for defendants having their matters, delay [in] justice for victims because they are waiting longer for finality in trials, and the longer the delay in trials” will become the new normality, or even worse, legal work in Australia could grind to a halt (Mesner, 2020).

The Courts were not the only judicial apparatus to be hit hard by this new pandemic, but so were community legal centres. For community legal centres, a major difficulty faced firstly and foremostly was the reduced functionality and capacity brought on by COVID-19. For example, numerous community legal centres, including the Citizens Advice Bureau, Environmental Defenders Office, Mental Health Law Centre, TenancyWA, The Humanitarian Group and the Youth Legal Service to name some, physically had to close their doors. To continue their valuable services, these community legal centres found themselves increasingly dependent on technology that some simply did not have at the beginning of the pandemic according to the director of the Youth Legal Service, David Kernohan (Kernohan, 2020).

Communication was also a prevalent issue brought on by COVID-19. As any self-respecting practitioner at any firm will tell you, communication is key to a successful practice. Therefore, centres such as the Environmental Defender’s Office and The Humanitarian Group made the successful switch to online interactive mediums such as ‘Zoom’ (Macknay, 2020). Meanwhile, other community legal centres such as the Welfare Rights & Advocacy Service and the Mental Health Law Centre specifically tailored COVID-19 “business continuity plans” to facilitate working from home (Jones, 2020).

For those centres who decided to keep their offices open, such as the Peel Community Legal Service, regular and thorough cleaning became the order of the day. According to Peel Community Legal Service CEO Kathleen Johnson, not only were the offices cleaned regularly, but new measures were introduced ranging from social distancing of workstations to the specified cleaning of highly used objects such as pens and door-handles (Johnson, 2020).

The issues caused by COVID-19 were however not just limited to the community legal centres themselves, but also their clientele. COVID-19 has been notable for its drastic negative economic impacts on today’s free-market based societies (Yeates, 2020). This economic-downturn has sadly been extremely potent against community legal centre’s clientele, who often come from “financially and socially disadvantage” backgrounds (JRCLC, 2002, p. 42). For example, as unemployment has crept up in Australia from 5.3% in January 2020 to 7.4% in late April 2020 (Australia Bureau of Statistics, 2020), David Kernohan predicts these trends will have a noticeable effect on youth mental health and their interactions with the law, thereby increasing his community legal centre’s clientele load (Kernohan, 2020). Moreover, Tim Macknay, the Managing Lawyer at the Environmental Defenders Office (Perth), states that his largest concern is the effect possible legislative changes to the reduction of planning approval criterion may have on the environment as Australia seeks to reinvigorate its economy (Macknay, 2020). This is especially of concern as public notables, such as Alan Jones AO and Mark Latham MLC, have recently called for further investment in coal-based  powerplants post-COVID, stating “Australia has demonised coal-fired power” and that coal could “secure Australia’s international strategic advantage” in years to come (Sky News, 2020).

Undoubtedly however the biggest impact COVID-19 has had on community legal centres and their clientele is a restriction of access to justice. With the closing of many community legal centres’ offices, most face-to-face consultations with clientele also came to an end. For the Peel Community Legal Service, this also meant a cessation to their community legal sessions and outreach clinics (Johnson, 2020).

For many community legal centres, the next logical step was to switch to phone-based consultations with clients. While in regional Western Australia this has long been the norm, community legal centres such as the Humanitarian Group faced the added difficulty of a language barrier with their clientele, who are often from “culturally and linguistically diverse communities” (Child, 2020). There also comes the pressure placed on community legal centre staff during this crisis to meet the increased demand for community legal assistance despite their aforementioned limited resources whilst working at home. One community legal centre which has seen a dramatic increase in workload is the Women’s Legal Service WA. According to CEO Dr Gillian Booth-Yudelman, daily phone calls almost tripled in what can be attributed to an epidemic rise of family violence during COVID-19 (Booth-Yudelman, 2020).

IV. POSITIVES?

In further reading Heart of Darkness whilst writing this article, an obscure and largely irrelevant line managed to stick with me. “The mind of man is capable of anything”. This single line, although unimportant to the plot-at-large of Heart of Darkness, singlehandedly manages to describe the amazing efforts community legal centres and their staff have given during this pandemic. These efforts have ultimately allowed these centres to persevere through this crisis and continue to operate at full capacity without major setbacks, a fact you won’t often see in the media as opposed to the sensationalism of court-delays and food quotas.

These positives range from Dr Gillian Booth-Yudelman reporting that while calls tripled, her staff, while under enormous pressure, nevertheless, managed the influx, of which she was very proud (Booth-Yudelman, 2020). There is also Catherine Eagle, the Principle Solicitor from the Welfare Rights & Advocacy Service, who commented that their community legal centre managed to continue operating not only through the pandemic, but also simultaneously handle a mass influx of inquiries surrounding “robodebt” (Eagle, 2020). Then there is Selva Stenross, the Principal Solicitor from the Citizens Advice Bureau who confidently mentioned their solicitors closed 238 files while working from home (Stenross, 2020).

Above all, community legal centres across metropolitan and regional areas appear to not only have survived, like the people of Western Australia they serve, but also thrived during this unprecedented pandemic.

V. AN OPTIMISTIC LOOK TO THE FUTURE

In contacting all of Western Australia’s community legal centres for this article, I asked a number of questions. One of these questions was “what ways has COVID-19 changed the way that your community legal centre will operate in the future?” I got many practical answers, ranging from increased levels of communication to a renewed appreciation for the symbiosis of technology and law. One answer, however, has stuck with me above all else.

The answer was that they will not change how they operate, but continue to operate how they always have.

This answer was especially inspiring as it drove home how throughout their history, community legal centres have always been undermanned and under-resourced, so much so that one could wager crisis’ like COVID-19 are just another day at the office for a practitioner at a community legal centre. What is truly awe-inspiring however is despite these almost insurmountable obstacles, community legal centres have and continue to dispense quality legal advice to the groups they assist.

To quote again Joseph Conrad, while the world of community legal-aid may sometimes seem “to lead into a heart of an immense darkness”, judging by their reaction to COVID-19, community legal centres will surely be the beacon of light that shines through to assist those legally who need it most.

VI. Bibliography

A. Articles/Books/Reports

Community Legal Centre Review Steering Committee, Joint Review of Community Legal Centres (Report No 1, 2003) (JRCLC)

Borello, Eliza, ‘First WA Coronavirus case flow to Perth for treatment after evacuating Diamond Princess Ship’, ABC (online, 21 February 2020) (Borello)

Jones, Alan, ‘Australia has ‘demonised coal fired power’ Alan Jones’, Sky News (Online, 16 July 2020) (Sky News)

Mesner, Kerri-Anne, ‘CQU law expert says jury trial suspension has domino impact’, The Morning Bulletin (online, 16 March 2020) (Mesner)

Schetzer, Louis, ‘Law Reform: Community Legal Centres and the Future of Law Reform’ (1998) 23(5) Alternative Law Journal 254 (Schetzer)

Yeates, Clancy, ‘Bad debts, dividends in focus as COVID-19 dominates bank profits’, The Sydney Morning Herald (online, 10 August 2020) (Yeates)

B. Interviews

Booth-Yudelman, Women’s Legal Service WA (17 July 2020) (Booth-Yudelman)

Child, Carol, The Humanitarian Group (28 July 2020) (Child)

Eagle, Catherine, Welfare Rights & Advocacy Service (16 July 2020) (Eagle)

Johnson, Kathleen, Peel Community Legal Service (16 July 2020) (Johnson)

Jones, Sarah, Mental Health Law Centre (16 July 2020) (Jones)

Kernohan, David, Youth Legal Services (16 July 2020) (Kernohan)

Macknay, Tim, Environmental Defenders Office (23 July 2020) (Macknay)

Stenross, Selva, Citizens Advice Bureau (23 July 2020) (Stenross)

C. Web Pages

‘Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia Limited’, Our History (Web Page, 1 January 2018) (Aboriginal Legal Service)

‘Australian Bureau of Statistics’, Labour Force, Australia, Jun 2020 (Web Page, 16 July 2020) (ABS)

Bleakly, Garry, ‘Citizens Advice Bureau’, CLC Chart (Web Page, 1 July 2020) (Citizens Advice Bureau)

Pollock, Zoe, ‘The Dictionary of Sydney’, Aboriginal Legal Service (Web Page, 1 January 2008) (Pollock)

‘TenancyWA’, About Us (Web Page, 1 January 2020) (TenancyWA)