Disaster lawyering has become part of everyday practice in Brisbane, the annual Community Legal Centres Queensland Conference was told yesterday.
Hub Community Legal lawyer Magdalena Dzienis was one of three speakers from CLCs around the state at the Embedding Disaster and Climate Justice in Community Legal Practice session at the event at the Hotel Grand Chancellor.
Magdalena’s centre at Inala in south-west Brisbane is in a region particularly vulnerable to riverine flooding, and it sustained widespread damage in 2011 and 2022 floods.
She said the region had a culturally diverse community where 45 per cent of residents spoke a language other than English at home, a median age of four years below the state median, and much financial hardship.
“These factors make it more challenging for the local community to obviously prepare for disaster but later on, also recover from any events,” Magdalena said.
She said the centre’s collocation with community centres helped with disaster response by making the service visible and accessible.
“In terms of how disaster demand has transformed our work, I think that it strengthened our community networks because of the different partnerships with local organisations and services, including neighbourhood centres, religious co-ordinators and other community groups,” she said.
Magdalena said disasters had also broadened the centre’s scope of service, due to their compounding effects such as problems with home security and financial security.
They had also emphasised the importance of having a collaborative network for peer learning and sharing resources, she said.
For lawyer Aaron Finn, watching his own home go under water in North Queensland had given him a greater perspective on how the profession could manage disasters.
The director of Townsville Community Law shared his experience of flooding while working in Mackay in 2008, emphasising the need for a trauma-informed approach to lawyering during extreme weather events.
Jacqui Cavanagh, Senior Lawyer in Caxton Community Legal Centre’s Disaster Recovery and Preparedness Service in Brisbane, spoke about the needs of her centre’s clients during events including floods in 2011 and 2022, and Cyclone Alfred this year.
The three Queensland perspectives enhanced the lessons and insights delivered by Dr Bronwyn Lay, from Disaster Legal Help Victoria, who encouraged a collective response to disaster and climate justice.
Victorian lawyer Dr Bronwyn Lay. Photo: Geoff McLeod
Bronwyn said much could be learned from examining case studies from the states, even with their differences in geography, funding environments, jurisdictions, capacity, hazards, emergency management, views of risk, and other areas.
She said the Victorian experience included the need to upskill staff in unfamiliar areas of law and to find ways to deal with maladaptive funding environments.
She said there was also a need to build a collective language, with a commitment to not using the word “natural” before disaster.
“There is no such thing as a natural disaster…we should use just the word disaster and there are a lot of reasons for that,” she said.
“The understanding comes out of a lot of UN work and research, in that these disasters are caused by our human choices – institutional, political, governance, economic choices actually determine the overwhelm in the system that causes harm to people and communities.”
Bronwyn said the compounding and cascading impacts of dealing with the discrete stages of a disaster – preparation, response and recovery – simultaneously, was also an area for research.
“One of the learnings we’ve had … is the complexity of disaster impacts intersecting with legal needs, but also the way we have to pivot and respond and change our approach as a result … a holistic community lawyering approach is the best practice,” she said.
The two-day conference has gathered CLCs from across the state for a plenary and workshops on topics including AI, centre management, data presentation and risk management.
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