VLAF Forum

Policy forum points the way
to policy wins

“There is no magic bullet” was the unofficial theme of the VLAF Policy Forum on 15 September 2011. This forum was initiated by the VLAF Policy Working Group. The working group aims to build capacity and evaluate the effectiveness and impact of policy work in the sector. The forum attracted many participants from Community Legal Centres, Law Institute of Victoria, Victoria Legal Aid and non legal organisations. An interesting group of panel speakers provided strategies, tactics and knowledge to the participants about undertaking policy and campaign work.

Terry Barnes, consultant, former public servant and Liberal ministerial adviser led off the presentations. His main message to the participants was that it is important for organisations to present the government with the problem but also provided the solution to address the problem that has been identified. He highlighted that Ministers are very busy and time pressed, and they have an information overload as they gauge competing interests and ideas. Terry Barnes emphasised  the need to develop a win-win solution – a good outcome for your clients and a political win for the government.

Clockwise from top left: Sarah Wilson, workshop participants,
Stan Winford, another workshop

Sarah Wilson, Senior Campaigner at Consumer Action Law Centre (CALC), talked about campaigns that are born out of the casework. Pay day lending is a current CALC campaign – where practitioners have been seeing a pattern with clients being exploited by predatory lenders giving short term loans at extortionate rates of interest. Sarah set out the necessary steps to follow to undertake a comprehensive campaign:

She also emphasised the importance of building partnerships and collaborations.

Stan Winford, lawyer and former ministerial adviser, underlined the messages from Terry Barnes and also added that it is important for staff who undertake campaign work to understand the political context of the issue. Staff need to be better informed about the decision making process, the budget cycle and when the best time to submit funding proposals to the government.

Clockwise from top left: Joy Acquaro from LIV was the forum facilitator,
participants at the forum, Terry Barnes at the podium, Kerry O'Shea

Kerry O’Shea, Public Affairs Manager, Law Institute of Victoria (LIV) provided a stimulating and thought-provoking guide to the tools and skills needed to successfully run campaign work and the strategies participants can use to talk to government, but her emphasis was on dealing with the media. She suggested that real case studies were very compelling for the media and for government funders, but understood the difficulty of lawyers exposing clients to that type of scrutiny.

The second part of the afternoon saw the participants form working groups and undertake practical exercises in designing some campaigns. The facilitators took participants through a process of designing the campaign using a template, and an expert in each group gave context to the issue or exercise. This information will be collated and provided to the participants of the workshop.

The VLAF Policy Working Group will continue to hold similar capacity building and training events to build the skills in the sector for policy workers. If you are interested in any aspect of this forum or the work of VLAF, including getting involved in working groups, please contact Simon Roberts, VLAF Project Officer on 03 9269 0545.

Please read more about VLAF on our website www.vlaf.org.au