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SUBMISSION TO SENATE COMMITTEE ON AUTISM
TERMS OF REFERENCE
JUSTICE SYSTEM
I wish to address serious issues I have personally encountered in the NSW Justice system.
- Lack of access to proper legal advice
- Lack of access to legal representation
- Lack of provision of services for people with autism by the NSW Civil &
Administrative Appeals Tribunal (NCAT)
- Because my only source of income has been and still is a pension – formerly disability and now aged – I do not have the money to pay for proper legal advice.
The only free legal service to which I have access is one sponsored by the NSW Law Society operating for just TWO HOURS every Thursday evening 6-8pm and TWO HOURS on every third Saturday morning 10am-12pm at the Northern Beaches community centre at Manly. This is all that is available for the entire Northern Beaches! Perhaps this is because it is perceived as a wealthy area, but there are many public housing tenants living there including me.
According to the 2016 census data, the population of the Northern Beaches in Sydney was 252,878. Of this, 12.6 per cent had less than $650 gross weekly income. I fall into this category as my fortnightly pension is $622.88 a fortnight.
There is an urgent need for a Community Legal Centre on the Sydney Northern Beaches. The two closest ones are in the city and at Parramatta. Back in 2008 I attended the one at Kensington, but that appeared to be simply a place to give UNSW law students a place to practice their face to face skills with clients. The one I saw did not have the knowledge or experience to assist me so I travelled all that way at night for nothing. A frustrating waste of my time. Perhaps one could be set up on Sydney’s northside to assist law students from Macquarie University, but only in straightforward matters, not in any involving people with AUTISM.
In my experience, the Disability Legal Service offshoot of the Human Rights Commission is not an option, it seems because it is too poorly funded. When I tried to engage with it and enlist its services back in 2008, there was only one solicitor and she had to service rural areas as well as the city. It was difficult to speak to her directly because she was so busy, and all phone calls had to be made through a third party, a young university student I think.
LAST WORD
I suspect because of the autistic idiosyncratic eccentric personality, people like me are at risk of having to engage with the Justice system, in my experience, mostly in regard to matters of discrimination, harassment and exploitation.
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- The ongoing access I have had to the NSW Justice system is as an applicant to the NSW Civil & Administrative Tribunal (NCAT).
I had a major harassment matter against Housing NSW back in 2008 in its residential tenancy division, and currently have an exploitation matter against the mechanic who sold me my car that was faulty, in its motor vehicle division.
In the course of the latter, I have discovered that NCAT makes no special provisions for people with AUTISM and does not appear to have a protocol in place for this.
Because of the coronavirus, I was required to participate in a hearing on 4 June 2020 over the phone instead of in a court room. I was seriously disadvantaged by this because of my Auditory Processing Disorder which means I cannot process auditory information quickly enough in order to keep up with the conversation. This was despite having sent NCAT two previous emails about my concern about difficulties I might have at hearings because of my AUTISM. One dated 6 December 2019 and the other 29 May 2020. I subsequently send another the day after the hearing on 5 June 2020. The response I have had from NCAT has not been satisfactory.
I appealed to NCAT on the grounds of lack of procedural fairness and errors of fact. I have been granted an appeal but now have to jump through more hoops which is hard for me to do on my own without any proper ongoing support.
A matter of great concern to me in relation to all this is what I was told by the police after I had taken the residential tenancy matter to NCAT back in 2008 and could not find any solicitor willing to take my case. ‘Anyone with a mental health issue and/or lives in public housing is not accepted by a court as a credible witness’. In other words, I was wasting my time taking the matter of harassment and abuse of my by a public housing authority to the tribunal. I am concerned that this is still the case at NCAT.
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REMEDIES:
(1) ESTABLISH AUTISM-SPECIFIC FREE LEGAL SERVICES IN EVERY
CAPITAL CITY IN AUSTRALIA.
(2) SOLICITORS WORKING THERE NEED TO HAVE KNOWLEDGE AND
UNDERSTANDING OF AUTISM, THINKING, FEELING AND BEHAVIOUR
(3) THEY NEED TO PROVIDE ONGOING LEGAL ADVICE (A COUPLE OF
APPOINTMENTS IF REQUIRED, AND IF THE MATTER IS ONGOING)
AND LEGAL REPRESENTATION.
(4) EDUCATE LAWYERS ABOUT AUTISM AS PART OF THEIR UNIVERSITY
COURSE. HOW IT MANIFESTS IN ADULTS WHO HAVE IT – EITHER
DIAGNOSED OR UNDIAGNOSED (SUSPECTED)
(5) MAKE IT AN APPEALING SPECIALITY THAT LAWYERS WILL WANT
TO ENGAGE WITH.