Image: All photos: Noa Valentine
For National Pro Bono Day on May 19, nonprofit legal service Refugee Advice & Casework Service (RACS) took the lead in the Walk For Justice, alongside hundreds of members of Sydney-based legal firms and organisations.
As a part of Law Week NSW, this annual event is held to recognise and celebrate the pro bono work undertaken across Australia, and to raise funds for pro bono referral organisations in NSW and across the country.
Organised by RACS for the fifth year in a row, the event began at Queens Square where RACS Centre Director and Principal Solicitor Sarah Dale welcomed the attendees, and took the opportunity to praise the work undertaken across the Sydney legal community.
Dale expressed gratitude for the almost 850,000 hours of pro bono work.
“We are especially thankful for the culture of pro bono within the NSW legal fraternity… Wherever you are dedicating your pro bono hours – for refugees, for Indigenous communities, for the environment, for the rights of the underserved – we celebrate your contribution to a kinder, more compassionate Australia,” Dale said in her address.
Despite the threat of poor weather, the walk continued without rain. Marchers began at Queens Square and walked around Hyde Park and up Macquarie Street with signs and banners with slogans like
“We’re really happy to see so many different law firms and also legal organisations represented… This event really is about the legal profession as a whole,” Hsu-Ann Khoury, RACS’ Head of Engagement and Communications, told City Hub.
Attendees from various firms across Sydney – including K& L Gates, Russell Kennedy, HBA Legal, Colin, Biggers & Paisley and others – expressed their appreciation for the recognition, as well as the importance of such work across the community.
“These kinds of events just remind you of that good feeling you get when you achieve positive outcomes for some of your pro bono clients,” one attendee told City Hub.
“It makes you feel a part of something I think, which is great,” said another.
According to RACS, in the last 12 months, the team has responded to 11,334 requests for legal help, with 3,244 people receiving face-to-face legal advice or information by their professionals.
“Those numbers reflect that there is a big need in our community for the service that we have. There are a lot of questions; there’s a lot of need for legal help for people seeking asylum, but of course it does reflect the capacity that we have,” said Khoury.
Though many do see the pro bono work undertaken as fulfilling, with overseas migration contribution a net gain of 306,000 people to Australia’s population, they also recognise that there is great difficulty in providing these services with an ever-increasing demand.”
“It can be very difficult… I think everybody knows that legal advice is an expensive, highly sought-after commodity,” an attendee explained to City Hub.
“… Language barriers, lack of network, family or friends to assist you. It can be quite daunting when you’re facing lots of roadblocks,” said another.
Federal Budget clouds future for refugees & asylum seekers
In light of the 2026-27 Federal Budget announcement on May 12, there are concerns for the futures of refugees and the aid they are to be provided.
According to the Budget, net migration will increase by 55,000, and there will be increased spending on multicultural affairs and citizenship, skills recognition and border enforcement, as well as a $605.2 million allocation to offshore processing.
However, many are displeased with the federal government’s allocation of funds towards refugees and Asylums seekers, with many referring to the almost $400 million blowout in offshore detention spending in the 2025-26 financial year as a misuse of the budget.
“So that’s a blowout that is really striking and really concerning. And it just shows that it’s not a system that’s sustainable,” said Khoury.
NSW’s opposition leader, Angus Taylor, has said the “[Albanese] government has lost control of its spending” in response to the offshore spending blowout, and also emphasised during his budget reply that they propose to “cap immigration numbers based on the number of homes constructed each year.”
Khoury argues that the money should be spent in other ways that better support refugees and migrants entering Australia, rather than maintaining the offshore detention process.
“It is a disproportionate amount that’s being spent on offshore detention, and things that really penalise and punish people for seeking asylum – which is a legal thing to do – versus actually supporting people who come here and need support.”
RACS writes open letter in response to Budget
In Taylor’s federal budget reply, he proposed that “the Coalition will deliver one of the biggest cuts to immigration in Australian history,” claiming to put “Australians First”.
His speech appeared to link the housing crisis with immigration, positioning the scale and pace of immigration as a concern Australians have that affects domestic housing, infrastructure and services.
In response to Taylor’s address, Sarah Dale wrote an open letter criticising his position on immigration, and his framing of refugees and migrants entering Australia as people who could never align with, as Taylor put it, “our values.”
“These are people you allege come from places that render it impossible for them to contribute wholly to our community,” wrote Dale.
“Yet these people are now nurses and creatives, business owners and soccer coaches. Many of them, in fact, are building the very houses we so desperately need to address the housing crisis you’ve so unfairly hung on their heads.”
The Coalition leader also proposed to make “the existing Australian Values Statement an enforceable visa statement,” and make it an obligation for visa holders to learn English.
Dale argued this sentiment breeds fear in the refugee and migrant population, which makes the process for people seeking legal aid more difficult.
“To continue peddling this narrative that such people arriving are doing so en masse and illegally, that they are accessing welfare from the moment they arrive (I wish this was the case Mr Taylor, it’s been a long-fought argument we have lost) is the true disservice to our Australian community. It breeds fear, disunity and mistrust. It’s a fallacy and it’s harmful,” said Dale.
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