Community Legal Centres NSW made a Pre-Budget Submission to the NSW Government in December 2025.
Our submission proposes a sustainable investment in community legal centres. Our sector works to ensure the safety and wellbeing of people experiencing domestic and family violence, housing precarity, poverty and complex, persistent disadvantage in NSW by providing free legal assistance services and support. Implementing our funding proposal will help achieve a number of outcomes under Treasury’s ‘secure’, ‘community’ and ‘housed’ wellbeing themes.
Our funding proposal:
1. Increasing annual NSW base funding for existing NSW community legal centres to $32 million, plus:
2. An additional special Regional, Rural and Remote Legal Assistance Loading for Community Legal Centres providing legal assistance to clients in regional, rural, remote and very remote areas;
3. Additional investment in the sector to ensure complete geographic coverage of Community Legal Centres across the state through existing and/or new CLCs;
4. Additional targeted ongoing funding for Community Legal Centres to provide specialist and culturally safe legal assistance to migrants, asylum seekers and refugees in NSW;
5. Additional targeted ongoing funding for Community Legal Centres to provide specialist legal assistance to LGBTIQ+ people in NSW;
6. Robust protocols for swift dispersal of funds in the event of emergencies;
7. Funding for the peak body, Community Legal Centres NSW, of $2m per annum.
Read our NSW Pre-Budget Submission 2026/27.