Indigenous legal services will continue turning clients away after Tuesday's federal budget failed to deliver a significant funding increase.
Funding for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (ATSILS) did not rise beyond inflation, with $164 million allocated in 2026-27, alongside a further $110.1 million for community legal centres through the National Access to Justice Partnership.
It is a measure that Nerita Waight, Chair of National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (NATSILS), says shows the government is ignoring First Nations people.
She said Indigenous women were the fastest growing prison cohort, adding: "Yet the disparity between funding for mainstream legal services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services in this Budget is breathtaking but unsurprising as this is the case every year."
Ms Waight argued Indigenous people were being "failed at every step" — from governments failing to provide support services that prevent people entering the justice system, to an unwillingness to end "punitive policies" driving incarceration rates higher.
In this budget, she said, the government had "failed to effectively fund ATSILS that are critical for culturally safe legal representation".
In 2024, an independent review into legal assistance funding led by Dr Warren Mundy found current funding levels were drastically insufficient to meet demand, particularly for marginalised groups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
Dr Mundy argued demand for legal assistance was increasing due in part to socio-economic pressures, including the "growing impacts of entrenched economic disadvantage, discrimination, and intergenerational trauma, experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples".
"I hope that this report lays the foundation for governments across Australia to overhaul how access to justice is supported in this country, particularly for Indigenous Australians, women and children," he said.
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Two years on, Ms Waight said the government had still failed to implement Dr Mundy's recommendations.
"At the commencement of the National Access to Justice Partnership we just saw a rebadging of our prior funding as new investment," she said.
"Since then, despite continuous calls, there has been no increase in investment, yet the numbers of Aboriginal people incarcerated across this nation continue to increase.
"Failing to properly fund ATSILS directly undermines national commitments to Closing the Gap. This results in inequality for our people in terms of access to justice but also inequality for the sector because yet again we cannot offer pay parity with mainstream legal aid."
In 2025, the national imprisonment rate reached 2,500.2 per 100,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults; 16.7 times the rate for non-Indigenous adults. For children and young people, the disparity was 23.4 times higher.
Kacey Teerman, Indigenous Rights Strategic Campaigner at Amnesty International Australia, said the budget had missed an opportunity to better protect Indigenous children and young people.
"Children have died in custody as recently as last year, and these deaths were and are preventable. Every day these systems continue to operate as they do, they put lives at risk," she said.
"The government has missed a critical opportunity to build on its 2022 Justice Reinvestment commitment and scale up First Nations-led prevention and diversion. Without increased federal leadership and funding, states will keep relying on the systems that are failing First Nations youth, their families and communities."
Ms Waight said the failure to invest in ATSILS undermined Australia's Closing the Gap commitments.
"The government's lack of leadership led to the failure of the Voice to Parliament, and now it seems they have decided that we should have no voice at all," she said.
"Not in police stations and prison cells where we're being harassed, discriminated against, and having our basic human rights denied; not in courtrooms as we combat systemic racism and bias; and certainly not for our children and young people who continue to pay for governments' failure to provide services and supports."
