Focusing on the experience of marginalised communities

The Voice, Access and Law Reform cluster has a particular focus on Indigenous Australians, children, the aged, LGBTQI populations, people with disabilities and those with difficulties in communication.

Researchers in this cluster shine a light on legal, institutional and structural barriers that impact on access to justice such as constitutional impediments, participation barriers, and economic, social and cultural factors.

Researchers facilitate processes, research, consultations and outcomes that aim to improve the ways that these communities experience law and regulation. Their methods are consultative and inclusive, and they work across disciplines and with external partners with a particular interest in human rights and access to justice.

Projects in this cluster include:

This project is a collaboration between Legal Aid and Macquarie University to train and employ 200 Indigenous legal services officers.

Participants will be employed by Legal Aid and supported through training at Certificate or Diploma level. A bridging course will be designed into the Bachelor of Laws or the Diploma of Laws for participants who wish to pursue admission to the Legal Profession.

Researchers

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is the world’s most highly ratified human rights treaty. However, there has been a global stagnation in child rights progress and the International and Canadian Child Rights Partnership (ICCRP) formed in 2015 as a response to this concerning trend.

This project addresses critical gaps in international knowledge about how to advance the CRC and transform research, law, policy and practice via intergenerational partnerships. This seven-year project, with its international research team, is working to advance children’s rights across five continents.

Researchers

The Legal Needs Project aims to extend the understanding of legal needs faced by clients of the Australian legal assistance sector. It examines the nature of legal need and the mechanisms that generate legal problems in the context of disadvantage.

The project seeks to deliver a new approach to understanding legal need across its social, political, legal and health dimensions and a causal explanation of why some people develop legal needs and others do not.

Working with a sector Reference Group, the research will drive a set of priority actions for legal assistance organisations to improve client outcomes.

Visit the Legal Needs Project website for more information.

Researchers

Contemporary policy debate is being hampered by shallow tribalism. Australia’s most pressing policy challenges too often become stuck in zero-sum ideological battles between left and right. Yet the best policy solutions reside in the ‘radical centre’ – in the synthesis between intellectual and ideological opposites and extremes. The radical centre seeks out the common ground in enduring disagreements to elucidate new and ambitious ideas that forge unexpected consensus. Nowhere in Australia is there a reform hub dedicated to hunting the radical centre.

The Radical Centre Reform Lab aims to fill this gap, by collaborating across divides and engaging with Australia’s diverse multicultural communities to forge broad consensus for radical centre reform. Our first project furthers work on a First Nations constitutional voice as advocated by the Uluru Statement – a historic, radical centre proposal for Indigenous constitutional recognition.

Visit the Radical Centre Reform Lab website for more information.

Researchers
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