 In 2014 we visited the St Kilda Legal Service in Melbourne, Australia, and interviewed their lawyer, Vanda Hamilton, about the important work they do to help vulnerable communities. We are a community legal service that offers free legal advice and information and also advocacy for marginalised people, for people who are exploited. St Kilda Legal Service has been here for 40 years and it was just really a ground swell of young lawyers and old lawyers too, I guess, who just said, look, you know, there's just no access to justice and was all voluntary at that time. It's grown over time so that now it's actually funded by government, although the base of our operations is still mostly volunteers. Which are the most vulnerable populations or groups of society in Victoria? I would have to say homeless and mentally ill people who also have other issues like drug and alcohol, homelessness. Really anyone who has to use the streets for anything and that includes sex workers. Women with children and also men with children who have been rendered homeless. So children are very vulnerable and sadly that's very common and people who have experienced family violence can also be very, very vulnerable. So last year there was a homeless person murdered under one of the bridges where homeless people stay a lot. Last year one of our sex workers, straight sex workers was murdered. What kind of services do you provide for vulnerable people? So I do outreach so I go out to see people because I reach a lot of clients who wouldn't otherwise access lawyers. And also of course that it's free, they don't have to fill out any forms. Quite often they're not eligible for legal aid anyway because they just don't fit into the guidelines. They would otherwise perhaps have to represent themselves in court. What are the typical cases when they are seeking your help? Quite often there are people who have come through the system because they are say homeless and you're a lot more likely to get picked up if you're homeless. So for instance, quite often people are living in their cars and their licence has been cancelled for whatever reason. And we have a number plate matching recognition system so it's very easy to be picked up. Probably drive alarm registered and all those sorts of things. And then one of the other things that's really big for a lot of my clients is fines. They just accubulate an enormous amount like thousands and thousands and thousands of fines and you can go to jail eventually. How many clients do you have as an organisation a year? As an organisation I think we see about 1700 people maybe 2000 a year. Myself I carry a load of about 300 or 400. I might have about 100 files open at any time. What can legal problems drug users are facing in Victoria? People aren't going to get jailed if they keep on coming up with possession and use. But trafficking is a problem because there's such a wide range of behaviours that is considered to be trafficking. So you can get a couple of extra, extra see pills when you're getting something for you going out to a club at night, you sit down next to your mate and you say here do you want two pills, please see that's trafficking you haven't got any money from them you just offered it to him. That's trafficking that's enormously harsh for people because it puts something on their criminal record that they're never going to get rid of. But the real problem for them just comes that drugs are criminalised. What law does criminalised drug use when was it enacted and what are the penalties in the law? Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, as far as I know they were all legal pretty much up to the 40s and then along with America started being criminalised and then of course there's a new strains of drugs have come along they've been criminalised pretty much as soon as people have realised so extra see and you know methamphetamine and those sorts of drugs have been criminalised pretty quickly. LSD took a while to be criminalised I think it did in a lot of countries. For a use and possession the very first time at your court you might get what's called a drug diversion and so they don't actually take you into court they say okay if you go and see a counsellor and then 30 days later you go and see the counsellor again and you give us proof that you've done it then it will never show up on any record and that's okay and there's a difference between you know trafficking selling a bit down the street and commercial trafficking so commercial trafficking is something else again and that has to go up to the higher courts and clearly there's much more significant sentences involved with that but I don't deal with people who do commercial trafficking that's for the big lawyers. How is the access to harm reduction services in Victoria for drug users? I think it's quite good I mean there's an overall expectation that harm reduction is the main priority of what we do with drug drug issues in Victoria. There's access to needle exchanges, there's access to being able to dispose of your of your fits, there's your needle disposal units and that's just about saying okay the public perception that syringes are a danger they don't like seeing syringes around that leads to drug users being abused and marginalised and you know a lot of concern about drug using so how about you just get rid of them responsibly and then perhaps you don't have to deal with so many calls to ban drug users and we can deal with harm reduction so you'll usually find syringe disposals in public toilets most public toilets have them in fact I don't think I've ever been to a public toilet that doesn't outside buildings like this you'll find them anywhere that's sort of a public service or building anywhere where people might go to actually inject or might come because they're an injecting drug user so they might carry the around with them and until they get to a safe disposal unit and the police are committed to harm reduction as well they understand that you know that's that makes their policing probably easier there's also this is one of the places where there's a trial of naltrexone giving naltrexone to users and to their families and friends not to workers but people who are intimately involved and there's training programs running for those people with a doctor and then as part of that you get your first kick What do you think would be the ideal drug legislation in terms of drug users? Oh as far as I'm concerned just total decriminalisation of everything I mean I just think it's totally absurd to have people who are otherwise good upstanding citizens or have the possibility of being thrown into the criminal system because their choice of drug isn't approved of by society it should be a health issue it should never be a legal issue I think that over the past I don't know maybe 15 or 16 years I just sense a hardening in people people have become very insular and they've become very judgmental about other people it's you don't get a sense that people understand that well that could be me or that could be my children it's very much this thing of you put yourself there you get yourself out why should we help you out you know why should we spend taxpayers pay as money and anyway just go to jail like you know that's the best kind of thing to get you off drugs a lot of the harms that come to people from drugs aren't actually necessarily about their health when we talk about drugs we're always talking about people in crisis really is there are a lot of functioning drug users we never hear from them they don't have a voice they're too scared to say they're functioning drug users society doesn't want to hear that there are people who are functioning drug users because that's not the dominant narrative about drug use but there are you might get over all your health issues you might never even have health issues from having taken drugs but your priors your criminal history is going to follow you around for the rest of your life