2017 Anti-Poverty Week occurs from the 15th to the 21st of October.
Poverty and severe hardship affect more than a million Australians. Around the world, more than a billion people are desperately poor.
Anti-Poverty Week is a week where all Australians are encouraged to organise or take part in an activity aiming to highlight or overcome issues of poverty and hardship here in Australia or overseas. It was established in Australia as an expansion of the UN's annual International Anti-Poverty Day on October 17.
In 2017, the TC Beirne School of Law is marking Anti-Poverty Week through its UQ Pro Bono Centre activities and through its researchers, who are making an important contribution to community education, policy implementation and law reform in the areas of law and poverty.
Partnerships
The UQ Pro Bono Centre is partnering with the UQ Centre for Communication and Social Change (CfCSC) and Community Legal Centres (CLC) partners on a storytelling project. UQ law students are working with CfCSC Masters students to produce short stories about poverty and injustice for people experiencing homelessness, prisoners, tenants and social security recipients. Through storytelling, we hope to highlight the work of frontline CLCs and the work they do in addressing everyday injustices faced by their clients.
Stories
This video, Helping those left behind, describes how legal services assist those with disabilities to stay in productive employment. This video was made by students Anna Cooke, Hemant Odhrani and Aneeta Khan.
Basic Rights Queensland is a state-wide specialist community legal centre, providing free advice, advocacy and legal services to people having problems with social security or disability discrimination.
Helping farmers save the farm. This story, produced by volunteer law students Lachlan Seeto and Abraham Philips, discusses how access to pro bono legal services can help farmers protect their livelihood when it is threatened by other industries such as mining.
The Environmental Defenders Office Qld helps individuals and communities concerned with protecting their environment and their health - whether they live in urban towns, suburbs, in the outback or along the coast.
Homelessness can happen to anyone. Homelessness is a common problem, driven by a combination of factors, and how the legal advice provided by LawRight can help the homeless get their lives back on track, for example by negotiating with landlords and creditors.
LawRight provides outreach legal clinics at community services to interview clients and undertake legal casework, and also work on policy and law reform issues relating to homelessness.
This video, Tenants Queensland - Qstars Advice Program, made by students Chengyuan Liu, Yueling Wu, Wenye Zhang, Clinton Trueman, Amanda Wisenthal, and Tenants Queensland: Wendy Herman, shows renters learning about their legal rights and how to negotiate with landlords.
Tenants Queensland provides a range of tenancy information and advocacy services including a state-wide telephone advice service for tenants, publications, a tenancy law training program, and research and policy development.
Prisoners Legal Service provides legal advice, information and assistance to prisoners and their families on matters arising from incarceration.
Poverty and law reform
Through the Pro Bono Centre, a number of law students are undertaking important pro bono research on issues affecting women in poverty. Students are currently working with Share the Dignity, a charity that focuses on assisting women who are/at risk of homelessness to access free or affordable sanitary products. UQ law students are also providing court support with the Domestic Violence Action Centre (DVAC), and are assisting DVAC clients in the Ipswich Magistrates Court for Domestic and Family Violence matters. In partnership with DV Connect, law students are providing important administrative & legal research support to consolidate its Pets in Crisis service, which enables pets to be moved to safe locations and be cared for in loving situations until their owners circumstances have changed for the better.
Veterans and ex-military personnel also disproportionately experience poverty in our community. In partnership with Slater+Gordon, our law students are continuing to provide research support for advocacy to the Federal Government on the legislative limitations and difficulties experienced by veterans for medical and mental health support once they return to non-military life.
Academic Research
Criminal and social justice research at the TC Beirne School of Law examines the impact of the law and legal institutions on communities and families, and aims to help build resilient communities by informing policy and legislative reforms through evidence based research. Our researchers examine a range of social issues and analyse how the criminal law, police powers and criminalisation can enhance socially just outcomes for all Australians.
Funded projects
Associate Professor Tamara Walsh, Anthony Thalia, Luke McNamara, Julia Quilter
Criminalisation of poverty and homelessness in Australia: A national study (2017–2020), ARC Linkage Projects
Dr Francesca Bartlett, Monica Taylor and Dr Sarel Gronum
Access to Justice: Technology, Innovation and Sustainability (2017-2018), AIBE Applied Research Project and LawRight
Research publications
- Walsh, Tamara, Homelessness and the law. Leichardt,NSW, Australia: Federation Press, 2011
- Walsh, Tamara K.E. (2016) Ten years of public nuisance in Queensland. Criminal Law Journal, 40 59-73.
- Walsh, Tamara (2015) New Zealanders in crisis in Australia: the absence of a social safety net. New Zealand Universities Law Review, 26 3: 673-702.
- Walsh, Tamara (2014) Homelessness legislation for Australia: a missed opportunity. University of New South Wales Law Journal, 37 3: 820-846.
- Walsh, Tamara (2014) 'Homelessness and the law: constitution, criminal law and human rights', by Gijsbert Johan Vonk and Alerbtjan Tollenaar (eds). European Journal of Homelessness, 8 2: 293-296.
- Walsh, Tamara (2011) Defendants' and criminal justice professionals' views on the Brisbane Special Circumstances Court. Journal of Judicial Administration, 21 2: 93-108.
- Walsh, Tamara K. E. and Marston, Greg (2010) Benefit overpayment, welfare fraud and financial hardship in Australia. Journal of Social Security Law, 17 2: 100-125.
- Western, Bruce (2014) Incarceration, inequality, and imagining alternatives. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 651 1: 302-306. doi:10.1177/0002716213503107
- Western, Bruce and Muller, Christopher (2013) Mass incarceration, macrosociolgy, and the poor. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 647 1: 166-189. doi:10.1177/0002716213475421
- Western, Bruce, Bloome, Deirdre, Sosnaud, Benjamin and Tach, Laura (2012) Economic insecurity and social stratification. Annual Review of Sociology, 38 341-359. doi:10.1146/annurev-soc-071811-145434