Surge in demand for racial justice centre exposes funding gap

At that time, Ibrahim – also the principal of commercial firm Central Lawyers – thought she would help plug the “obvious gap” and get back to business. Instead, the journey of building the RJC, establishing it in the community, and liaising with the government about the unmet needs of its clients “has been longer and harder than I anticipated”.

If it’s request for full government funding is finally answered, Ibrahim said the centre’s team of lawyers and support staff could grow, take on a greater number of cases, and further address those unmet needs. As it stands, it survives on community and pro bono legal support.

“If we’re fully funded, that means we would be able to take calls whenever they were coming through and be able to help everyone as they need help. Now, we have to run in a really selective way that’s really narrow because the demand is so high,” Ibrahim said.

The request for funding has come amid the royal commission into anti-Semitism, a parliamentary inquiry into the hate and racism experienced by First Nations people, and renewed discussions around hate speech and social cohesion. This conversation, Ibrahim said, has changed “so much” since the centre’s inception four years ago.

Referring to the recent heckling of an Aboriginal elder who was delivering a Welcome to Country at an Anzac Day dawn service, Ibrahim said the sentiment has shifted. At one end, there are quarters of the community that have accepted this behaviour; on the other, they understand there is a social fraying and a desire to change it.

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“There was a time when politicians almost all agreed that we didn’t need to have section 18C [of the Racial Discrimination Act], which is the racial hate laws in the civil jurisdiction, and now we’re talking about ways to criminalise hate speech.

“We have gone so far from one side of the discussion and into a whole other spectrum right in this moment,” Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim said that as society navigates this seismic change, centres like the RJC “need actual, operational support to exist”.

“Obviously, it’s a unique position to be in, considering that many years ago, people were kind of ready to abandon even bothering to protect hate speech at all, and here we are – things have changed and shifted,” she said.

While there are other legal avenues available to RJC’s clients – including Legal Aid and private practice – Ibrahim said she has found that having a centre staffed by people with lived experiences has provided the community with a “unique understanding”.

Ibrahim shared that there have been top-tier firms and silks who have dismissed cases as having no merit, “because they don’t know how to describe the situation, and they don’t see it through our lens”.

“In the many examples we’ve had so far [where] those firms and barristers would think something doesn’t have prospects, we go on to get really good outcomes for those clients because of the lens in which we see the world and understand the law,” Ibrahim added.

For RJC’s clients, success is not just about courtroom victories, with Ibrahim explaining: “Justice for our clients looks like being seen and heard on their own terms without somebody telling the story for them, being able to sit in their power and know that that’s what they have experienced and a group of learned people believe them.”

For example, while it was just in its infancy, RJC ran a case against NSW Police on behalf of an Aboriginal woman.

For the centre, the focus of this case was to get through the litigation and to test out a model. For the particular facts in that case, the model meant explaining to the court how discrimination or racism was operating and having experts come in to provide guidance.

What was “very important” about that case was challenging the NSW Police’s argument that police were not subject to anti-discrimination laws under the certain legislation that was being applied.

“They are subject to anti-discrimination laws not to discriminate, so that was certainly very important to set the record,” Ibrahim said.

In addition to government funding, the RJC centre has called on the community to rally behind it, including by attending its events.