In 2010, funding to the Australian Law Reform Commission was scaled back significantly. With those effects now being felt by the statutory body, Claire Chaffey examines how the legal team is soldiering on.

When Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan delivered the Federal budget in 2010, he made an announcement that came as a body blow to what is arguably one of the most important legal bodies in the country.

The Labor Government would, said Swan, be scaling back funding to the Australian Law Reform Commission (ALRC) by a total of 15 per cent over the next three years.

Coming from a government determined to restore the federal budget to surplus, such a funding cut hardly came as a surprise. However, it was still a cause for great concern and prompted a Senate inquiry, which examined the adequacy of the ALRC’s staffing and resources, as well as the appropriateness of the allocation of functions between the ALRC and other statutory agencies.

On 8 April last year, the Senate released a report recommending that the Federal Government restore the ALRC’s budget cuts “as a matter of urgency”.

That has not happened.

Money matters

According to Catherine Gale, the president of the Law Council of Australia (LCA), the funding cuts are potentially disastrous for the ALRC.

“The Law Council’s view is that the Commission has done excellent work and made a very significant contribution to changes to laws in this country,” she says.

“Our concern at the moment is that the funding cuts will inevitably impact on their capacity to do their work. The Government cut their funding by a total of 15 per cent over a three-year period, and it’s not rocket science to see that the costs of running any organisation, even if you just look at CPI, are probably going up by 3 or 4 per cent per annum.”

Added to this, says Gale, is the so-called “efficiency dividend” which is bestowed upon all Commonwealth departments, whereby they must find additional cost savings of 1.5 per cent per annum.

“Our concern is that their capacity to continue to do the good work they have done in the past is going to be significantly impacted,” says Gale.

“The ALRC is a unique and valuable institution, and they have done first-rate work. We certainly support the Commission’s ongoing role as a permanent and independent law reform commission, and we support the recommendation made by the Senate in 2011 to restore their funding.”

Small but effective

At present, the ALRC is staffed by a small but dedicated team of commissioners, legal officers and support staff.

The president, Professor Rosalind Croucher, is effectively “on loan” from Macquarie University until her five-year tenure comes to an end in December 2014.

To Croucher, her team is like a well-oiled machine, able to do lots with very little, and able to convince the Government to implement 85 per cent of their suggestions for law reform across the country.

“We have quite a small team, but it’s like a team of elite athletes,” she says. “We can cover a lot of ground because of the way we work. We leverage a lot of expertise – all pro bono, I might add – and we are able to do that because of the power of our independence and because we are perceived as not being part of government, but effectively speaking to government at a very high level.”

This independence is sacred to the statutory body, which operates under the Australian Law Reform Commission Act 1996 (Cth).

In the same Senate report which examined the ALRC’s funding, both Government and Opposition senators agreed that the ALRC’s independence is vital to its effectiveness.

It is undoubtedly effective, with the vast majority of its recommendations implemented by Government.

This success, says Croucher, can be attributed to three key points.

Ros Croucher, president, ALRC

“Our work is undertaken on terms of reference issued by the Attorney-General, so you have already got commitment by the Government to reform in certain areas,” she says. “Secondly, there is a tabling requirement under our Act, so the documents can’t just sit on a shelf. They become public documents by virtue of that public tabling element.

“The other reason is the established track record of our processes: the commitment to consultation, community involvement through submissions, and the quality assurance processes we have by way of advisory and expert input.”

These facets, says Croucher, equate to a “tried and true method of inquiry work”.

Scoring goals

Over the last few years, the ALRC has worked on some significant projects.

In Gale’s opinion, the inquiry into Australia’s privacy laws was one of the most important projects conducted by the Commission in recent times.

“It is a pretty hot topic, particularly given all the developments in recent years with social media and the internet,” she says. “Privacy is just a moving feast, and it is a challenge for governments and legislators the world over. The work the Commission was able to do in the development of the new Australian privacy principles was a significant reform and a very critical one. It is probably something that will need to be looked at again, on an ongoing basis.”

Another major achievement, says Gale, was the inquiry into discovery in the Federal Court, and she believes the Commission’s work on that project resulted in a new and improved Federal Court system.

“The inquiry on discovery in the Federal Court in 2010 resulted in changes to discovery processes in federal civil proceedings and gave the court a greater supervisory role in relation to discovery processes,” she says. “This helps streamline processes, make them more efficient and prevent unnecessary delays and expenditure.”

Croucher has been the president of the Commission since December 2009 and has overseen some significant inquiries, including two significant reports on family violence and two upcoming inquiries into copyright laws and age-related barriers to gaining employment in Australia.

While Croucher says the ALRC team likes to have at least two inquiries on the boil at any one time (though with different reporting periods), she says she also endeavours to improve processes and methods of communication which enhance the work of the organisation.

“We have had a rethinking of the way we present our reports, streamlining the way we write them, which is more focused on communicating our conclusions. All of the reports, since I have been president, have been accompanied by a summary report, so the main volume – which we try to keep to about 500 pages, maximum – are kept to a smaller version than they have been in the past, and the summary document is the communication strategy, particularly for those who are going to implement our work,” she says.

“It is the quick, condensed message of the key ideas and thinking in the reports, and that has been working very well.”

Croucher says her team has also been “aggressively” using various electronic communication strategies, such as blogs, e-newsletters and other forums as a way of establishing “communication loops” and creating input from the community.

“It sounds very simple, but [these initiatives have] been greeted very, very well by stakeholders, and also by government,” she says.

Talking about relationships

According to Gale, the much-maligned budgetary cuts have impacted upon the ALRC’s ability to communicate as well as it might like.

“A very important part of the ALRC’s role is their liaison with the Australian community and their ability to have the community feed information into them,” she says.

“I understand that they have had to reduce their information and educational activities because of these budgetary cuts. Given the importance of this body, and the fact that it was set up as a statutory body, independent of government, to bring an independent set of eyes to the laws and their operation in this country, it’s very concerning.”

One line of communication that hasn’t been affected, however, is that between the ALRC, the Law Council and the various state-based law societies, and Croucher says the Commission’s relationship with such bodies is invaluable.

“We value immensely the input of the legal profession,” she says. “The integrity and value of our reports is enhanced enormously by the willing engagement of all aspects of the legal profession and judiciary, whether it is through consultations, advisory committees or submissions. All of those contributions are read, weighed up, evaluated and appreciated enormously for the strength of the experience and wisdom that lies within them.”