Legal Aid in Australia: Free Help and Grants by State and Territory

Legal aid in Australia is run by eight separate state and territory commissions, not one national body. Free legal information by phone is open to anyone, and legal advice and duty lawyer help are free or low cost in most places, though who qualifies for them varies. A grant of aid for ongoing representation depends on means, merit and the type of matter, and the details of every one of those tests differ by jurisdiction.

This hub covers all eight Australian legal aid commissions: Legal Aid NSW, Victoria Legal Aid, Legal Aid Queensland, Legal Aid WA, the Legal Services Commission of South Australia, Tasmania Legal Aid, Legal Aid NT and Legal Aid ACT, plus the national funding layer that supports all eight. For the detail behind any single figure below, including the exact statute section and the primary source it comes from, see that jurisdiction's own page, linked throughout and listed in full at the end.

What Legal Aid Is, and Is Not

Every commission on this page draws the same basic line, even though the labels differ. Legal information is general and free. Legal advice is free or low cost, but access to it differs by commission (see the next section). Legal assistance, meaning a lawyer funded to run a case from start to finish, is a grant: a separate, tested decision that a specific person's specific matter is one the commission will pay for, subject to conditions that can include a contribution or a charge over property.

None of the eight commissions is a court, a private law firm or a guarantee of representation. A grant of aid is a decision that public money will fund a lawyer for a matter that clears that commission's tests; it is never a promise about how a case will turn out, and being refused a grant does not mean a person has no legal rights, only that this particular funding path is closed for that matter, at least until reconsidered or reviewed.

Free Help Before a Grant

Every commission runs a helpline that gives free legal information to anyone who calls, and most provide lawyers at court on the day, but whether that court help is free, and for whom, differs by jurisdiction.

• New South Wales: LawAccess NSW, 1300 888 529, 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday, gives free legal information and referral to anyone; legal advice appointments are free for people Legal Aid NSW assesses as eligible. Duty lawyers sit at all local courts and at family law court locations when sitting; in criminal matters, advice only or a first appearance in custody needs no eligibility, but representation beyond that generally does. See Legal Aid NSW.
• Victoria: the Legal Help line, 1300 792 387, weekdays 8am to 6pm, with no means test, plus a dedicated First Nations line, 1300 MOB VLA (1300 662 852). Duty lawyer help at court is free, but an income test applies to duty lawyer help for adults facing criminal charges who are not in custody. See Victoria Legal Aid.
• Queensland: the legal information line, 1300 65 11 88, Monday to Friday 8:30am to 4:30pm AEST, which can arrange a free advice session with a lawyer where the problem is more serious and the caller meets Legal Aid Queensland's eligibility criteria, plus a Youth Legal Advice Hotline and an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Information Line. Duty lawyer services are free and not means tested. See Legal Aid Queensland.
• Western Australia: the Infoline, 1300 650 579, Monday to Friday 9am to 4pm WST, for information, referral and booking legal advice appointments; calls are charged at local call rates. Duty lawyers are free if you are in custody, in prison or appearing in the Children's Court, but seeing the duty lawyer at the Magistrates Court costs 20 dollars, or 5 dollars with a concession card. See Legal Aid WA.
• South Australia: the Legal Helpline, 1300 366 424, weekdays 9am to 4:30pm, or (08) 8111 5600 for interstate callers. The Commission describes its duty lawyers at Magistrates and Youth Courts as a free service, though they may not be available every day. See Legal Services Commission of SA.
• Tasmania: the Legal Help line, 1300 366 611, weekdays, though exact hours vary across Tasmania Legal Aid's own pages. See Tasmania Legal Aid.
• Northern Territory: the Legal Aid Helpline, 1800 019 343, Monday to Friday 8am to 4.30pm, gives free information and books free legal advice sessions, normally without a means test and normally limited to two per matter. Free duty lawyers cover the Local Court, Youth Justice Court, Supreme Court sittings and the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia. See Legal Aid NT.
• Australian Capital Territory: the Legal Aid Helpline, 1300 654 314, for information and limited advice, plus free duty lawyers at the Magistrates Court, Children's Court and Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia for criminal and family proceedings. See Legal Aid ACT.

A caller does not need to qualify for anything to get legal information from these lines. What they cannot do is guarantee a lawyer will run a case beyond that first conversation; that step is the grant, covered next.

How a Grant Is Decided: Means, Merit and Matter

Every commission gates a grant of legal assistance behind some combination of three ideas, even where the names differ: a means test (can this person afford a private lawyer), a merit test (does the matter have a reasonable chance and is public money an appropriate way to fund it), and a matter or forum test (is this the type of case, and the right jurisdiction, for this commission to fund at all). New South Wales names the most tests separately: an Income Test, an Assets Test, a Lifestyle Test (which can refuse aid even where income and assets pass), a Merit Test, a Jurisdiction Test, a Forum Test and an Availability of Funds Test. Western Australia groups the same idea into three: a matter test, a means test and a merits test.

The means test mechanism itself is not uniform. New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania set flat dollar income and asset figures. New South Wales's Income Test is satisfied at net assessable income of 450 dollars a week or less; Victoria's means test, current from 25 August 2025, needs weekly income under 360 dollars and assets under 1,095 dollars for no contribution at all; Queensland's Grants Policy Manual sets contribution free and maximum income thresholds across eighteen rows by household type, work status and number of children rather than one figure, on a page last updated in November 2022; Tasmania runs two parallel tests, a Simplified Means Test and an older National Means Test tied to the Henderson Poverty Line, that calculate income differently but use the same allowable asset levels.

The Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and the Northern Territory instead tie income to the Henderson Poverty Line, the poverty line figure published by the Melbourne Institute, rather than a fixed policy number: the ACT sets Allowed Income with regard to 120 percent of that line for a single person (its published indicator amount was 498 dollars in the table effective May 2025); South Australia measures income against the line directly, and general assets against a Consumer Price Index and Average Weekly Earnings weighted average; the Northern Territory pegs its net weekly income threshold to 110 percent of the same line (521 dollars in its current Guidelines), its housing deduction and home equity allowance to Greater Darwin rents and unit prices, and its vehicle equity allowance to the average Territory price of a five year old family car, so those figures move with regional cost data rather than staying fixed like a state table.

Western Australia publishes no dollar thresholds for its means test on its public website. Its guidelines describe an assessment of income, assets and spare income in prose only, decided case by case, with no numbers attached on its public site. Dollar figures for a Western Australian means test that circulate on other websites are not published by Legal Aid WA and should not be relied on. The Northern Territory has a similar trap: a 344 dollar weekly income and 5,000 dollar asset figure set circulates online, but it does not match Legal Aid NT's current Guidelines. Use the current figures on each commission's own page, linked from the jurisdiction's spoke below.

Merit tests share more common ground than means tests do. Queensland and the Northern Territory use near identical wording: Reasonable Prospects of Success, the Prudent Self-Funding Litigant test, and Appropriateness of Spending Limited Public Funds. Victoria and the Australian Capital Territory apply the same three limbs to Commonwealth law matters such as family law, and Tasmania applies a Commonwealth Merits Test to Commonwealth matters. Outside Commonwealth matters the tests diverge: the Australian Capital Territory's general statutory Reasonableness test (s28(4)) is a broader weighing of benefit, detriment and likely outcome, Victoria uses a reasonableness or interests of justice test depending on the type of state matter, and South Australia's Merits Test asks whether the applicant would be in an equal, not better, position than a private person risking their own money. The shared three limb drafting reflects a common national template behind the Commonwealth merits test, unlike the means test, which differs in both figures and underlying mechanism by jurisdiction.

Priority groups are set nationally by the National Access to Justice Partnership, which names 14 priority client groups: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people; children and young people up to 24; LGBTIQA+ people; older people (over 65, or Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people over 50); people affected by natural disasters; people experiencing or at risk of family, domestic and sexual violence; people experiencing or at risk of homelessness; people in custody and prisoners; people in outer regional and remote areas; people with a disability or mental illness; people with low education levels; culturally and linguistically diverse people; single parents; and vulnerable migrants, including asylum seekers and refugees. The agreement says services are not excluded from helping people outside these groups, and lets each state identify extra priority groups of its own. Commissions layer their own rules on top: Victoria scores priority, capability and context under its Client Priority and Capability Policy, Western Australia names three priorities for state matters, the Northern Territory ranks priority classes of persons and matters, and some commission guidelines still reproduce the priority list from an earlier national agreement.

Contributions and charges over property follow the same pattern of shared concept, different rules. A commission that grants aid can usually require a contribution scaled to income and assets, and can secure an unpaid contribution, or the eventual cost of the matter, with a charge or other security over property. South Australia's trigger is ownership: if the applicant or a financially associated person owns or is buying real estate, including the family home, and the costs of the case exceed 2,530 dollars, the Commission registers a statutory charge whatever the case is about. Tasmania can require an equitable charge wherever costs and disbursements may exceed 1,000 dollars. New South Wales will require a charge over real property an eligible applicant owns, unless the matter is exempt, in expensive matters such as family law court proceedings, indictable criminal matters and higher court civil proceedings, or where the dispute is about the property itself. Western Australia's Act allows a charge registered over land as a condition of a grant (s39(1)(b)(iv) and s44A), but neither the Act nor Legal Aid WA's public pages set a dollar figure that triggers it. Elsewhere, Victoria generally requires a caveat over real estate an assisted person owns to secure the contribution, Queensland attaches a first charge to money or property recovered or preserved in the matter, and the ACT can secure a contribution by a charge on land (s31A).

The National Layer: The National Access to Justice Partnership

All eight commissions sit inside one Commonwealth funding structure. The National Access to Justice Partnership 2025 to 2030 replaced the National Legal Assistance Partnership on 1 July 2025, the day after the older agreement expired. The Commonwealth and all eight states and territories are signed parties, and the agreement runs to 30 June 2030.

It commits an estimated 3.9 billion dollars, precisely 3,863.790 million dollars, in Commonwealth funding nationally over the five years, across five funded streams: legal aid commissions (1,784.997 million dollars, the largest stream), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services (837.814 million dollars), community legal centres (557.603 million dollars), family violence prevention legal services (366.766 million dollars), women's legal services (275.698 million dollars, its own separate stream rather than folded into the other categories), and administration (40.912 million dollars). Among the Commonwealth priorities its funding is administered under, the agreement lists Closing the Gap and reducing incarceration rates for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander adults and youth, and names a focus on women and children escaping or at risk of family and domestic violence, and on culturally appropriate legal assistance for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

The agreement itself sets out figures by jurisdiction. New South Wales's total allocation is 1,012.245 million dollars over the five years, of which its Legal Aid Commission stream alone is 559.894 million dollars, the largest state or territory Legal Aid Commission allocation of the eight. The Australian Capital Territory's total allocation is 75.790 million dollars, of which its Legal Aid Commission stream is 41.598 million dollars, the smallest of the eight. Western Australia's Department of Justice separately publishes a 2026 to 2027 figure of more than 210 million dollars distributed to legal assistance services in the state, of which about 99.9 million dollars is the Commonwealth's contribution through the National Access to Justice Partnership. The agreement's Table 3 also estimates about 678 million dollars for Victoria, about 389 million dollars of it for the legal aid commission stream, and about 305 million dollars for South Australia, about 133 million dollars of it for the Legal Services Commission.

A trap worth flagging directly: several commission documents still name the old National Legal Assistance Partnership, or an even older predecessor agreement, because those documents have not been fully rewritten since 1 July 2025 (Legal Aid ACT's guidelines, reprinted in August 2025, still cite the older National Partnership Agreement on Legal Assistance Services). Where a commission's own PDF or guidelines page uses the old name, that reflects the document's own age, not a change in the current national funding arrangement.

Comparing the Eight Commissions

Two cautions sit behind this table. Tasmania Legal Aid's own pages give slightly different Legal Help line hours, and the Tasmania page flags that discrepancy rather than choosing one. Queensland's means test figures come from a page last updated in November 2022, so confirm them with Legal Aid Queensland before relying on them.

Where Else to Go

When a legal aid commission cannot help, whether because the matter falls outside its guidelines or because an applicant does not clear a test, each jurisdiction points to similar categories of alternative help, delivered by different named organisations in each state or territory.

Community legal centres are independent organisations, legally separate from the state or territory legal aid commission, that give free legal help. They are one of the five funded streams under the National Access to Justice Partnership. Legal Aid NSW links to clcnsw.org.au; Legal Aid ACT says there are six centres in the Territory; Community Legal Centres Queensland keeps a find-a-centre directory; Tasmania has three regional centres, in greater Hobart, greater Launceston and the North West; Legal Aid WA lists 28 across the state.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services are a separately funded national stream and exist in every jurisdiction: the Aboriginal Legal Service (NSW/ACT) serves both New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory as one provider; the Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service serves Victoria; the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service serves Queensland; the Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia serves that state; the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement serves South Australia; the Tasmanian Aboriginal Legal Service serves Tasmania; and the North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency serves the Northern Territory.

Family violence prevention legal services and women's legal services are named as their own funded streams nationally. Family violence prevention legal services named on the state pages include Djirra (formerly the Family Violence Prevention and Legal Service Victoria) in Victoria; nine services across Western Australia, seven of them run by Aboriginal Family Legal Services, with Albany served by the Southern Aboriginal Corporation and Fitzroy Crossing by the Marnin Family Support and Legal Unit; the Family Violence Legal Service Aboriginal Corporation in South Australia (free call 1800 385 722); and the North Australian Aboriginal Family Legal Service and the Central Australian Aboriginal Family Legal Unit in the Northern Territory. Named women's legal services include Women's Legal Service WA, Women's Legal Service SA (free call 1800 655 037), Women's Legal Service Tasmania, and, in the Northern Territory, Katherine Women's Information and Legal Services and the Central Australian Women's Legal Service. Where a state page does not name a provider in one of these streams, ask that commission's helpline for the local service.

A law society or law institute referral service is another route for matters outside legal aid's own guidelines: the Law Society of NSW and the Queensland Law Society run referral services, and the Law Institute of Victoria's Legal Referral Service offers a free 30 minute interview with a private lawyer, a starting conversation rather than free ongoing advice.

Pro bono referral is a further, separate layer in Western Australia, where Law Access runs its own eligibility criteria and its own means test, distinct from Legal Aid WA's.

For related topics already covered elsewhere on this site, see family law in Australia and child support in Australia for how Commonwealth family law priorities interact with a parenting or property matter, and the protection order guides for each state and territory for family violence intervention, restraining and protection orders, several of which have their own dedicated legal aid duty lawyer service named on the relevant state's page in this cluster.

Legal Aid in Each State and Territory

• Legal Aid NSW: a flat dollar means test, with a 21-day appeal window to the Legal Aid Review Panel.
• Victoria Legal Aid: a flat dollar means test current from 25 August 2025, with a two-stage reconsideration-then-review process.
• Legal Aid Queensland: an eighteen-row Grants Policy Manual means test table, with a two-stage 28-day review process.
• Legal Aid WA: no published dollar figures for its means test, assessed case by case, with a two-stage 28-day review process.
• Legal Services Commission of SA: a Henderson Poverty Line means test, with a statutory charge over real estate once costs exceed 2,530 dollars.
• Tasmania Legal Aid: two parallel flat dollar means tests, with a 14-day review request window.
• Legal Aid NT: a Henderson Poverty Line means test pegged to Greater Darwin costs, with a three-month window at each review stage.
• Legal Aid ACT: a Henderson Poverty Line means test set at 120 percent of the line, with a 28-day reconsideration-then-review process.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is legal aid free in Australia?

Legal information by phone is free in every state and territory, without a means test. Legal advice and duty lawyer help are free or low cost in most places, but not unconditionally everywhere: New South Wales gives free advice to people it assesses as eligible, Victoria applies an income test to duty lawyer help for adults facing criminal charges who are not in custody, and Western Australia charges 20 dollars (5 dollars with a concession card) at the Magistrates Court. A grant of legal assistance for ongoing representation is different: it is means tested, merit tested and matter tested, and can still carry a contribution or a charge over property even where it is approved.

Do all Australian states use the same income test for legal aid?

No. New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania set flat dollar income and asset figures. The Australian Capital Territory, South Australia and the Northern Territory tie the income limit to the Henderson Poverty Line instead of a fixed policy number, and the Northern Territory also pegs several figures to Greater Darwin housing costs and Territory car prices. Western Australia does not publish dollar figures for its means test on its public website and assesses each application case by case.

What happens if a legal aid commission refuses my application?

Every commission lets you challenge a refusal, usually through an internal reconsideration first and then a second stage review body, but the name of that body differs by jurisdiction, and the time limits range from 14 days to three months (see the comparison table). Depending on the jurisdiction, the clock runs from the date of the decision letter or from when you receive notice of it, and some decisions cannot be challenged at all. Check the relevant state or territory page below, or the commission directly, before relying on a limit.

What is the National Access to Justice Partnership?

It is the current five year Commonwealth funding agreement for legal assistance across Australia, replacing the National Legal Assistance Partnership from 1 July 2025 and running to 30 June 2030. The Commonwealth and all eight states and territories are signed parties, and it commits an estimated 3.9 billion dollars over five years across five funded streams: legal aid commissions, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal services, community legal centres, family violence prevention legal services and women's legal services.

Can I get legal aid for a family law matter?

Family law matters involving children, family violence or complex parenting and support issues are named Commonwealth funding priorities, and duty lawyers or Family Advocacy and Support Services appear at family law court locations in most of the jurisdictions covered here. A grant for ongoing representation still needs to clear that commission's means and merit tests.

Is duty lawyer help at court always free?

Not everywhere. Western Australia charges 20 dollars to see the duty lawyer at the Magistrates Court, or 5 dollars with a concession card, though it is free in custody, in prison or at the Children's Court. Victoria applies an income test to duty lawyer help for adults facing criminal charges who are not in custody. In New South Wales criminal matters, seeing a duty lawyer for advice only or for a first appearance in custody needs no eligibility, but representation beyond that generally does. Queensland, South Australia, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory describe their duty lawyer services as free.

Where else can I get free legal help if a legal aid commission cannot assist me?

Community legal centres, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander legal service in that state or territory, family violence prevention legal services and women's legal services, a law society or law institute referral service, and pro bono schemes each cover matters or people a legal aid commission's own guidelines leave out. Each state and territory page names the local versions of these services.