Interview: Danielle Munro, HIV/AIDS Legal Centre (HALC)
The HIV/AIDS Legal Centre (HALC) is the only specialist community legal centre for people with HIV- or hepatitis-related legal matters in Australia. Danielle Munro, solicitor at HALC, spoke with us this month about her role at the Centre and her involvement in the Health+Law Partnership as research solicitor. Danielle also described the services HALC offers, some of the biggest challenges facing its clients, and how the Centre’s work takes a holistic approach to the law.
What is your role at HALC?
I am one of the solicitors at HALC. I am currently advising and representing clients that live outside of New South Wales or Queensland. I advise on migration law, HIV disclosure requirements, discrimination laws and other legal issues as they relate to a person’s HIV status. I also provide community legal education sessions to other legal centres, health care professionals and the general public, to educate them on HIV and the law.
Can you tell us about your involvement with Health+Law as the research solicitor?
I receive referrals from the interviewers from the Legal Needs Study (LeNS) when the participant has an unmet legal need and consents to a referral to our specialist legal service. I speak to the client about their legal issue and, if we can, I provide legal advice, legal information, or a referral to a suitable legal service in their local area. If it is an issue that we cannot advise on or if we believe that the client would be better assisted by a different service, then I call the other legal service to provide a ‘warm referral’ to ensure the client receives the assistance required.
What has motivated you to work at the intersection of HIV, hepatitis and the law?
I have a particular interest in refugee law and assisting people applying for asylum, so I was drawn to the work that HALC does in migration law. Getting positive migration outcomes can be incredibly rewarding as it often has a significant impact on people’s lives. I also enjoy dealing with the intersection between people’s health and the law, and the way that resolving their legal issues can often have benefits for their health and overall wellbeing.
A recently published article titled ‘HIV related Legal Needs, Demographic Change, and Trends in Australia since 1992: A Review of Legal Administrative Data’, reported that HALC provided an average of 1,042 discrete services every year. Can you tell me about the types of legal services HALC provides and what this entails?
The discrete services we provide are either legal advice, a legal task, information, or a referral. This is recorded differently to when we fully represent the client in their matter.
We provide services to people living with HIV and hepatitis on legal issues relating to their HIV or hepatitis status. The main issues we see are in the areas of:
immigration,
criminal law (including road traffic and motor vehicle offenses),
wills and estates,
discrimination,
tenancy issues,
employment, and
family and domestic violence.
We provide legal advice via telephone appointments to clients on their legal options and prospects. We also provide some legal advice by email. If a client doesn’t have a current legal issue but wants to know about an area of law, then we can provide information or direct them to one of our publications.
We will draft a document for the client, such as a will, or a response to a letter on behalf of the client. If the client needs full representation in their legal issue and they do not meet our eligibility criteria to represent them, then we provide referrals to other services which could be a local community legal centre or a private lawyer who we know to have experience in the client’s particular legal matter.
Immigration is the largest legal area HALC practices in, what changes or improvements would you like to see to the migration system?
Australia’s migration laws and processes are outdated and more complicated than other countries. The health criteria for visas prevent many people living with HIV from obtaining permanent residency. At HALC, we advocate for changes to the health criteria to increase what is known as the ‘significant cost threshold’ and to increase the number of available visas with a health waiver, so that people living with HIV have more visa options available.
Making the migration system less complicated might also reduce the costs of a visa application and prevent applicants from needing to pay for legal services.
We would also like to see the processing times reduced, as we have clients who have been waiting several years for a visa application due to the wait at the Department of Home Affairs and the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.
In your view, what are the biggest challenges facing HALC clients now?
Obtaining affordable legal assistance and correct migration advice is an ongoing challenge for clients. We often see clients, especially those from interstate, who, either due to poor legal advice or the absence of legal advice, have made errors in dealing with their migration issue and been set back significantly as a result. Furthermore, our clients that are waiting for a visa decision are living in uncertainty and are unable to make plans for their future. We hear about the stress the migration process is putting on our clients and their families on a daily basis. Visas can take between two and six years to process, on average, during which time people are in limbo.
On a regular basis we also see clients deal with discrimination related to their HIV status. That discrimination might be experienced in healthcare settings, at work, or in their interpersonal lives, where issues like threatened disclosure or actual disclosure can be incredibly distressing for our clients.
A final question for you. In HALC’s most recent Annual Report (2022–2023), it says the Centre takes a ‘holisitic’ approach to people’s legal needs, meaning clients have their legal disputes dealt with ‘in their totality’. Can you tell me about what this means and why it’s important?
We consider our clients individual circumstances which have led to them requiring our legal advice and we also consider the impact the legal problem is having on them.
We work closely with other organisations to connect our clients to support services such as psychologists, social workers, housing or financial counselling to try to prevent our clients from having further legal problems in the future.
We also help clients in a comprehensive way with their legal matter to ensure it is dealt with effectively. This might mean, for example, helping their healthcare practitioner with knowing what to write in supporting documentation for their migration matter.
For more information, including HALC’s guides to HIV and law, reports, submissions, factsheets and more, go to the HALC website: HIV/AIDS Legal Centre Inc. (NSW) (halc.org.au)