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What you will find on this page:
Do I qualify for Legal Assistance?
What issues has the Centre been working on?
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For over ten years the Brimbank Melton Community Legal Centre has been providing free legal services to residents of Melbourne’s outer western suburbs. The Centre services clients who live work or study in the City of Brimbank, the Shire of Melton and Bacchus Marsh. Our service area is one of Victoria’s fastest growing and most culturally diverse regions.
Contacting us
The Centre has offices in Deer Park and Melton.
Deer Park office: 822 Ballarat Road, Deer Park 3023 Telephone: 9363 1811 Fax: 9360 4851
Melton office: Suite 6, 3 Alexandra Street, Melton 3337 Telephone: 9971 1800 Fax: 9746 8924
Email: info@communitywest.org.au
Both offices are open between 9.00 am to 5.00 pm Monday to Thursday. The Deer Park office is also open between 9.00 am to 4.00 pm on Friday. Interpreters can be provided on request.
We operate evening advice sessions on the first and third Monday of the month at the Deer Park office and on the second and fourth Monday of the month at the Melton office. Appointments are necessary.
Legal Centre Brochure Download a copy of our legal centre brochure here Staff and funding
The centre has a permanent staff of four lawyers and two coordinators working across our two offices. The Centre is supported by legal and paralegal volunteers and pro bono assistance from the private sector. The Centre has benefited from two separate six month full-time seconded lawyers provided by Mallesons Stephen Jaques under the Victorian Attorney-General's Pro Bono Scheme.
The Centre is funded principally by Victoria Legal Aid and the Commonwealth Attorney-General’s Department. We also receive philanthropic project funding, private donations and funds recovered through litigation costs orders. We are a member of the Federation of Community Legal Centres and the Public Interest Clearing House (PILCH).
Our work falls into three main areas:
Legal information, referral, advice and casework.
We provide these services to individual clients. Our permanent staff sees clients Monday to Friday during office hours. We conduct a night service on Monday nights staffed by volunteer lawyers and paralegals. Appointments are necessary. In conjunction with other Western region community legal centres we provide duty lawyer services for intervention order clients at the
Community legal education. We conduct legal information sessions for community groups, participate in community education forums and prepare legal information publications.
Law reform and advocacy. We advocate for a fairer legal system which better protects the rights of the disadvantaged. We conduct strategic public interest litigation to promote and effect change.
Do I qualify for legal assistance?
The Centre provides legal services to any person who lives, works or studies in our community.
If you live, work or study in the City of Brimbank, the Shire of Melton or in Bacchus Marsh, we can assist you.
Sometimes we also assist clients from outside of our service area who are referred to us by other organisations because the organisation has a conflict of interest, or because of our particular expertise.
If you need legal assistance but don’t live, work or study in our service area, you should call the Federation of Community Legal Centres on 9654 2204 to find out about your nearest community legal centre.
The type and the extent of assistance we can provide you depends on a number of factors including:
Our focus is on providing accessible services to disadvantaged members of our community. As a general rule, if you can afford to pay for a lawyer, the Centre’s assistance will be limited to information and referral (eg: we will refer you to an appropriate private solicitor).
Our resources are limited and there is a high and growing demand for our service. Accordingly, we normally cannot represent clients in court matters. We can provide you with help representing yourself.
Do I have to pay for the Centre’s service?
No. Our service is free. However you might have to pay for expenses associated with your legal matter like application fees, court fees etc.
We prefer it if you contact us by telephone first on 9363 1811. Our reception worker will take down some brief details in relation to your matter and one of our lawyers or paralegals will call you back to discuss the matter. Because of the demand for our service, there is normally a waiting period for our lawyers or paralegals to call you.
When you speak to our legal staff, they will advise you of the most appropriate way of dealing with your legal matter. They might give you advice on the phone, make an appointment to see you or refer you to another organisation.
I don’t speak English. Can I get an interpreter?
Yes. The Centre can arrange interpreters. There is no charge to the client. Call us on 9363 1811 and tell us that you need an interpreter. We can then call you back with an interpreter.
What legal areas does the Centre deal with?
Our casework, advice and referral work focuses on the following areas:
The Centre has a strong tradition of working on issues concerning the human rights of imprisoned people (prisons and detention centres), family law and family violence.
The Centre can provide on-site Community Legal Education (CLE) to social groups, schools, classes, community centres etc by request.
We can conduct classes on common legal problems (family law, wills, neighbourhood disputes etc), dealing with private lawyers, or the legal system generally. Interested groups should call us on 9363 1811.
Lawyers We are currently recruiting qualified lawyers to volunteer during the day or at our night service.
We seek a commitment of at least one night service session a month for 12 months. No prior experience in community law is required. Full training and support is provided. Interested lawyers should contact 9363 1811 or info@communitywest.org.au
Paralegal (law students and others) We are not actively recruiting for paralegal volunteers but we do have vacancies that come up from time to time. If you are interested in volunteering, please email your contact details, a brief statement of experience and your availability to info@communitywest.org.au . We seek a Human Rights and Indigenous Education Advocacy Project
The Melbourne Community Foundation's Towards a Just Society Fund has funded the Centre on a project basis to employ Charandev Singh in the position of Human Rights Advocacy Worker. Charandev's work focuses on preventing deaths in custody, advocating on issues of the human rights of prisoners and immigration detainees and promoting indigenous education. What have we been working on recently?
Lobbying against the Federal Government's Industrial Relations Changes The Federal Government's planned industrial relations changes will remove important protections for Australian workers. The Government's advertising campaign about the changes is misleading. Click here to read an article we wrote in the Herald Sun on 14 June 2005 explaining the planned unfair dismissal changes.
Coronial Inquest - Unlawful use of force by prison guard We recently represented the wife and children of a prisoner shot dead by a prison guard at the Coronial Inquest into the death. The prisoner was fatally shot while trying to escape from custody at St Vincent’s Hospital where he was receiving medical treatment. He was unarmed and handcuffed when he was shot and had been in custody for around 10 days on remand on burglary charges.
The Coroner generally accepted all of our arguments about how the death occurred. He found that there was “virtually no evidence” that the prisoner “posed a real or immediate threat” the guard. The Coroner noted that the guard’s partner, “was hot on the heels of the handcuffed prisoner and assuredly would have brought him to ground in metres.” The Coroner found that the escape attempt could have been easily prevented without the use of the firearm.
The Coroner stated that in his opinion, an indictable offence had been committed in relation to the death.
The Coroner also accepted many of our arguments in relation to the need for prison gun reform. He criticised Corrections Victoria for “some obvious deficiencies in training and procedures” relating to firearms use by prison officers. He further noted criticisms of the “apparent inordinate delay” in the implementation of key recommendations of a report by former Police Commissioner Neil Comrie on the use of force in Victorian prisons.
Corrections Victoria have adopted some of the key recommendations endorsed and made by the Centre at the Inquest.
A copy of the Coroner’s decision can be found here.
Systemic discrimination against women prisoners We are part of a coalition of organisations who have prepared a report on discrimination against women prisoners in the Victorian prison system. The report has been submitted to the Equal Opportunity Commission in support of a request that the EOC conduct a investigation into systemic discrimination in women’s prisons in Victoria.
Protection against unreasonable criminal record discrimination We are advocating for the introduction of enforceable laws prohibiting discrimination on the grounds of criminal record.
A copy of our submission to the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s inquiry into criminal record discrimination can be found here.
Review of anti-terrorism laws Our community lawyer has been convening the Anti-Terrorism Laws Working Group of the Federation. This group has made submissions the Parliamentary Joint Committee on ASIO, ASIS and DSD, regarding the government’s power to proscribe organisations and ASIO’s powers of detention and questioning. The Working Group has also organised training on anti-terrorism laws for community legal centre lawyers, produced a campaign kit and is in the process of working on community legal education on these laws.
Alleged assault on prisoners by prison guards We acted for four prisoners who allege that they were assaulted by prison guards during the course of a forced cell extraction (ie: forcibly moving prisoners from one cell to another) at Port Phillip Prison in 1999. The prisoners allege that officers from the prison’s Tactical Operations Group punched, beat, kicked and slammed their heads against the floor of their cells and doorways and poles, during the course of the extraction.
In response to a freedom of information request by the Centre, Corrections Victoria refused to hand over numerous damaging documents and investigation reports about the incident. The Centre successfully pursued the documents in proceedings in the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT), obtaining nearly all of the material except the names of individual prison guards who were alleged to be involved in the assault.
The documents reveal serious breaches of procedure and support the allegations of assault. The prison failed to give the prisoners a chance to move cells peacefully. Force was unlawfully used as the first and only option. The prison failed to comply with its obligations to video tape the extractions. The prison could not produce video footage from standing cameras of the alleged assaults. There was no proper reason for the extraction and relocation of the prisoners. The prisoners sustained injuries but the details of the injuries were not properly recorded by prison officers. The prisoners did not receive any, or any adequate medical attention.
The Centre filed writs in the County Court seeking compensation for the assaults. The compensation matter has now been referred to Slater & Gordon.
A copy of the freedom of information decision by VCAT is here.
Click here to read an article from the Business Review Weekly, 6-12 April 2006 about the case.
You will need to have Adobe Acrobat installed on your computer in order to view these files. If you do not already have a copy of Adobe Acrobat Reader, you can download it for free from http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html.
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