Poor pay sees lawyers stop legal aid work

The Law Institute of Victoria is predicting that the state's court system will be overloaded with unrepresented clients because of inadequate funding for legal aid.

The institute says pay for legal aid work has become so poor and the workload so great that hundreds of lawyers have made the decision to immediately stop taking on cases.

A recent survey by the Federal Attorney-General's department showed that a third of law firms that have done legal aid work in the past have stopped mostly because the rate of pay is about half the going commercial rate.

The president of the Law Council of Australia, Ross Ray, says it is a national problem for all state governments and the Commonwealth.

"The system is really calling out for help and it is time the State and Federal Government paid appropriate attention to the issues. It is the community that loses out and it really is time this was dealt with," he said.

The president of the Law Institute of Victoria, Tony Burke, says the legal aid system in Victoria is in crisis and legal aid lawyers are preparing to down tools.

"We are expecting that as a consequence, there will be delays in the courts," he said.

"The courts will struggle. Judges and magistrates will have to deal with many more unrepresented people. There will be inconvenience. The cost of running the courts will increase. The cost of policing will increase and the cost of corrections will increase.

"For too long in Victoria we have had what is effectively a gaping wound in the criminal justice system and it has been patched over by the unpaid labour of lawyers in the worst-paid sector of the private legal profession. Now that unpaid labour won't any longer be available and the problem will get worse."

Mr Burke says legal aid lawyers were once paid almost as much as they could earn from paying clients, but now they earn somewhere between 15 and 45 per cent of the average private fee.

"The Victorian Bar recently did some research which shows that junior barristers, for example, who in the main would have had at least six years of tertiary education and several years in practice, are earning as little as $36,000 a year," he said.

"And that is sometimes half and less than a half of what is being paid to the public prosecutors at the other end of the bar table and it is even less than what is being paid in the private profession."

Mr Burke says lawyers who take on legal aid cases are now required to do more background work than in the past and they are not getting paid for it.

"We are expecting that some hundreds of lawyers who in the main are doing legally aided work will cease to do this effectively pro bono or charity work that isn't covered by legal aid and that will have a reverberation through the system," he said.

"That happens now. That is beginning today, the practitioners are saying enough is enough. They are not going to continue with this charity work they are not paid for any longer."

The state Attorney-General's office referred request for comment to the managing director of Legal Aid Victoria, Bevan Warner.

Mr Warner is urging lawyers not to stop working for legal aid.

"Well, it would have a significant impact and I sincerely hope that that doesn't occur," he said.

Mr Warner confirmed Victoria Legal Aid had an operating deficit of more than $20 million last financial year, and said there should be more Commonwealth funding.

"Whereas the State Government has provided ongoing assurances in relation to funding sufficient to preserve service levels, the Commonwealth Government has not and services in Commonwealth law matters have had to be reduced by 30 per cent," he said.

"Ten years ago the Commonwealth Government contributed approximately 60 per cent of legal aid funding and last year this figure had dropped to 30 per cent.

"Now Commonwealth's policy is to encourage parents to focus on their needs of their children when they separate and just yesterday I was advised of a situation where a parent on income support had not seen their eight-year-child for some years and having a home with $170,000 equity meant they were ineligible for legal aid to have a lawyer put the case for contact with the child.

"Now the only option available to this parent was to sell or refinance the home and to fund their own action."

Mr Warner says lawyers' fees are now under review.

"Legal aid is committing to reviewing its fee structures to ensure that the time allowances that are comprehended in our fee structures are contributing to an effective court system and one that avoids unnecessary court events," he said.

"But it is important that we align these time allowances with proposed new court procedures that will come into effect late next year and the Law Institute is aware of these plans."

A spokesman for the Federal Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, says legal aid received a one-off funding boost of $7 million last year, including about $2 million dollars for Legal Aid Victoria.

Related:

Law council backs Family Court merger plan
The Law Council of Australia has backed recommendations to revamp family law by integrating the Family Court with the Family Law Division of the Federal Magistrates Court.

Ex-police media director guilty of perjury

Prosecutors have dropped a number of charges against former Victoria Police media director Stephen Linnell on an undertaking that he will plead guilty to perjury.

Linnell's lawyer told the Melbourne Magistrates Court, his client would plead guilty to three charges of perjury and three summary counts of breaching confidentiality.

Thirteen related charges against him have been dropped.

The charges relate to Office of Police Integrity (OPI) hearings into whether senior police figures were part of a chain of leaks that derailed a murder investigation.

The court heard Linnell was prepared to give an undertaking to give evidence against his co-accused, former assistant commissioner Noel Ashby.

He is facing 29 charges.

He will also give evidence against and Police Association Secretary Paul Mullett, who has been charged with five offences.

Mullett and Ashby will face a committal hearing next May.

Linnell will return to court to enter his plea in February.

Related:

Nixon quits as police chief
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon has announced she is resigning from the top job.

Sacked Victorian police squad lawless
THE police corruption watchdog claims some members of the former armed offenders squad took the law into their own hands.

Lives put at risk by corrupt police
LIVES are being put at risk by "festering" cells of corrupt police leaking information on confidential investigations to criminals, a police corruption watchdog has warned.

Charge gangland police suspect: OPI
VICTORIA'S police watchdog has recommended criminal charges against Paul Dale, a former policeman linked to a double underworld murder, along with several other police.

One OPI officer sacked, another suspended
Some people may form the view that it is tit for tat between the OPI and some opposition (political or other like Police Association or affiliates?) down in Victoria (See Links). Perhaps the expense claims are a way to weaken previous statements made by the OPI in relation to allegation against police?

Police-crime links linger
A SMALL number of Victorian police are maintaining improper links with organised crime figures, the state's police corruption watchdog says.

Police watchdog 'leaks like a sieve'
The Victoria Police watchdog leaks like a sieve, according to former assistant commissioner Noel Ashby, who could face criminal charges following an Office of Police Integrity (OPI) inquiry.

Police criticised as OPI hearing wraps up
The head of an Office of Police Integrity (OPI) inquiry is expected to call for stronger ethical guidelines within Victoria Police when he tables his report in Parliament.

Pedophile John Reid jailed for 12 years

A PEDOPHILE has been jailed for 12 ½ years for sex offences against five children.

John William Reid, of East Doncaster in Victoria, was found guilty of more than 28 offences involving four girls and one boy aged between eight and 17.

In the Victorian County Court today, the 66-year-old was sentenced to 12 years and six months' jail for the offences that took place between 1990 and 1997 at his business and home.

Judge John Barnett sentenced him to a minimum term of eight years and placed him on the serious sex offenders' list.

A jury previously found Reid guilty of charges including rape, indecent assault of a child under 16, and sexual penetration of a child under 16.

The court was told Reid denied committing the offences and a doctor had diagnosed him as suffering bipolar affective disorder.

Wannabe serial killer gets 20 years

A Victorian man who fantasised about becoming a notorious Australian serial killer has been jailed for 20 years for killing his best mate.

John McKenzie, 22, stabbed his 26-year-old friend Todd Leslie Laver in the chest with a hunting knife for no apparent reason on December 1, 2006.

A court on Friday was told McKenzie had fantasised for three or four years about murdering someone and about becoming a notorious Australian serial killer.

"You murdered him in cold blood to gratify your perverted interest in killing another human being," Victorian Supreme Court Justine Stephen Kaye said.

Justice Kaye sentenced McKenzie to a maximum of 20 years with a minimum of 15.

17 years for killer boxer

A BOXER found guilty of murdering a partygoer who fell to his death at a warehouse rave has been jailed for 17 years. He will serve a non-parole period of at least 12 years.

The dead man's father told the Supreme Court that his sorrow at his son's death was never ending.

But Khalid Baker, 21, still protests his innocence.

"I didn't murder no one, I'm innocent," he told Justice Simon Whelan as he was led from the Supreme Court yesterday.

Baker took part in several unprovoked assaults on guests at the party in Brunswick on November 26, 2005.

Justice Whelan said Baker, of Hoppers Crossing, was involved in violent and aggressive fighting on a landing at the warehouse.

Albert Snowball, 22, was knocked out of a window and fell 5.4m, hitting his head on the footpath.

Mr Snowball, of Perth, was rushed to hospital with brain damage but died.

In May, a jury found Baker guilty of the murder.

Jonathon Snowball told the court of his grief for his son.

"Albert Snowball was my first-born son. I sat him on my knee. I read to him. I carried him against my chest," Mr Snowball said in a victim impact statement.

"He was a good, honourable human being. It is not an easy thing to watch your son die."

Justice Whelan said yesterday that Baker did not intend to kill Mr Snowball or for him to go through the window.

He said while Baker had been found guilty of murder it was a case where "the moral culpability involved approaches the confines of manslaughter".

Justice Whelan said reports tendered to the court suggested Baker had significant problems in his life, which he attributed to his troubles in learning to read and write and prejudice he had experienced because of his colour and religion.

Man sentenced for schoolies attack

A 20-year-old man has been sentenced to two years in a youth justice centre for hitting a fellow reveller during schoolies week celebrations in Lorne.

Alexander James Kennedy had pleaded not guilty to one count of recklessly causing serious injury, but was convicted by a jury.

The County Court heard Kennedy had punched a fellow reveller, Jon Hucker, in the face outside the Lorne Hotel in 2006.

Mr Hucker fell to the ground and fractured his skull.

He was comatose for a fortnight, and required long-term rehabilitation to learn how how to walk and speak again.

Outside court, Mr Hucker said he was pleased with today's sentence.

"(There's) no need for violence. Really, like, why do it? There's no need for it," he said.

His mother, Suzanne Hucker, said the two year sentence was fair.

"Very grateful that truth and justice prevailed, and that Jon now can move on," she said.

The court heard Kennedy was drinking before the attack, but was remorseful and had resolved to curtail his consumption of alcohol.

Judge Wendy Wilmoth said courts must deal severely with alcohol-fuelled street violence.

Sex offender jailed for nine years

A Victorian man who sexually abused 12 children has been sentenced to nine years and four months in jail.

John Beyer, 66, abused children including wards of the state from boys' homes where he volunteered, and children living in his local area.

His youngest victim was four or five-years-old, and the oldest 13.

Beyer pleaded guilty to 31 counts of sexual assault.

The court heard the offending stretched over 12 years, between 1973 and 1985.

In sentencing, Judge Duncan Allen said his offending was ruthless and horrifically predatory.

Outside court one of Beyer's victims said the sentence gave him closure.

"It's going to help me move on for sure," the victim said.

Beyer will serve a non-parole period of six years.

Darkroom sex-attack teacher jailed

A teacher who sexually assaulted a student in a school photography darkroom over a two-year period has been sentenced to five years' jail.

Paul Anthony Segar, 50, of Mount Waverley, went on trial for 10 sexual offences against a former student.

A jury found him guilty of eight, including indecent acts with a child under 16 and sexual penetration of a child under 16 under his care.

The victim, a student of Segar's at an eastern suburbs secondary college in the 1990s, was 14 when he grabbed her from behind and touched her thighs and groin.

County Court Judge Julian Leckie said Segar's offences involved a serious breach of trust.

"I find nothing within the evidence which indicates true remorse," he said.

Judge Leckie told the court the victim and Segar worked on developing photos in the darkroom for the school magazine.

The court heard Segar first approached the victim in the darkroom, putting his hand on her chest and running his hands up and down her pelvis when she was 14.

During the next two years he sexually assaulted her on a number of other occasions.

The woman reported the matter to police about eight years later and wore a recording device to meet him at a shopping centre in March 2006.

Segar was sentenced to five years in jail with a three year non-parole period.

Siblings jailed for plot to kill father

Maria Stallone and Dominic Natale couldn't stand the thought of their violent father selling two family properties and disinheriting the children he denied fathering.

So they hatched a plan to knock him off.

They initially plotted to stab Dominico Natale, now 83, with a syringe while he was out walking, hoping to pass his death off as a heart attack.

But a hitman hired by Stallone, 44, and Natale, 48, told them it wouldn't work and suggested a hit-and-run instead in return for a payment of $14,000.

The only hitch was the hitman wasn't a hitman at all.

He was an undercover police officer who had been dutifully recording telephone conversations between Stallone and Natale as they plotted to kill their father in September 2006.

The pair was visibly distraught on Thursday as Victorian Supreme Court Justice Betty King sentenced each of them to nine years in jail. Both had pleaded guilty to one count of incitement to murder.

Stallone sat with her head bowed, hiding behind her brown wavy hair, throughout most of Thursday's hearing, occasionally wiping away tears.

Natale also hung his head, and began to weep when Justice King delivered the sentence and his family, sitting opposite, cried out in dismay.

A violent and aggressive man, Dominico Natale Snr regularly beat his wife and four children in the family's home in Melbourne's North Fitzroy.

He was jealous of his wife and disputed he was the children's father.

When his wife passed away in 2005 from a brain tumour, Dominico Natale Snr planned to sell the family's North Fitzroy home and another property in Preston.

He was entitled to the proceeds of the Preston house, but his wife's share of the North Fitzroy home would be split between the four children.

Stallone and Natale feared their father would disinherit his children and give the money instead to his niece and other daughter, whom he lived with, or to the Jehovah's Witnesses.

Stallone, who was a teacher at the time, met with the undercover policeman she believed was a hitman.

When told she could back out at any time, she replied she wanted to go through with the murder and handed over a $3,000 deposit.

On September 20, the day of the planned murder and her ultimate arrest, Stallone had the $11,000 balance ready.

Justice King agreed the siblings' father was a "difficult, irascible man who had no great love for his children or wife," but noted this was not their motivation for murdering their father.

Even if this had been the motivation, that would not have justified any plan to murder him, Justice King said.

"This was not a crime committed in the heat of passion or extremis, but calculated, planned and pursued over a period of some weeks," she said.

"Your father's behaviour towards you as his children was reprehensible, your behaviour to your father as his children was morally repugnant and indefensible."

Justice King said the pair had earned a three-year discount from their sentences by pleading guilty.

Stallone, of Reservoir, and Natale, of Mildura, will be eligible for parole in six years.

Man jailed over night club assault

A Kilmore man has been sentenced to a year in jail for attacking a young woman in a nightclub last year.

James Murphy was 20 when he attacked 18-year-old Tamika Malone at the Area61 nightclub in St Kilda.

Murphy has pleaded guilty to intentionally causing serious injury.

The court has heard Murphy was drunk when he propositioned Ms Malone at the nightclub in February last year.

When she resisted Murphy pulled her off a podium and punched her ten times.

She suffered a broken nose and teeth and cuts in her back from glass on the floor.

The Judge criticised the reliance of young people on alcohol for entertainment and stimulation saying it has reached insidious proportions.

He sentenced Murphy to 12 months jail with a non parole period of six months.