• We were delighted that the Department of Justice and Attorney General announced that community legal centres (CLCs) in Queensland will be entering into five-year funding terms from July 2020. This will mean greater certainty for Queensland communities about the availability of services and will ensure that CLCs will be able to devote more time and resources to services in the community, not being weighed down by a three-year funding cycle.
• The Department also announced grants totalling more than $260,000 had been awarded to Queensland community legal centres giving them a much-needed boost to help support those in need of legal assistance and representation by improving digital infrastructure and support. 
• We continued to work with staff from the Department of Justice and Attorney-General on the 2019 procurement process including producing resources to help CLCs respond to the application.
• We have been progressively rolling out the National Accreditation Scheme Phase Three with Community Legal Centres Australia.  Phase Three will focus on building performance and ownership of continuous quality improvement. 
• We assisted Youth Advocacy Centre and HUB Community Legal to achieve Phase Three Accreditation. 
• We participated in the stakeholder task force on portable long service leave.  Portable long service leave will help our sector attract and retain highly skilled workers and support worker wellbeing.  We were pleased to see the Bill introduced into Parliament recently.
• We hosted a Leadership Forum in Cairns. This was a fantastic opportunity to catch up with the many staff working in the sector and take a deep dive into the procurement process and to work with the leaders in the sector on a range of challenges and opportunities. 
• We held our AGM and we published our annual report which you can view here.  We are pleased to welcome back management committee members for the second year of their two-year term. 
• The Attorney-General’s Department  (AGD) released the National Legal Assistance Partnership Overview paper which outlines the components of the agreement which will replace the National Partnership Agreement. We worked with Community Legal Centres Australia to provide feedback to the AGD. We are concerned about the Commonwealth proposed continuation of the advocacy restriction. The clarification of the “gag clause” will restrict CLCs telling important client stories to the government to prevent further legal need, so we will continue to oppose this prohibition. 
• We travelled to Cherbourg with the team from YAC and had the opportunity to learn about the history of Aboriginal people in the South Burnett.
• We held our final face-to-face workshop with the Digital Strategy Working Group to review and validate findings and recommendations for a Digital Strategy.   We look forward to finalising the Digital Strategy in the coming weeks.
• We added our name to the letter to the Federal Attorney-General outlining our concerns about the proposed family court merger.
• Congratulations to Candice Hughes, YFS Legal who won the Lawyers Weekly Indigenous Lawyer of the Year Award. Well done also to the outstanding Community Legal Centre Lawyers who were Finalists in this year's Lawyers Weekly Awards including Thelma Schwartz, QIFVLS; Cheryl-Maree Bentley, Women’s Legal Service Queensland; Rikki-Jane Buckland, Gold Coast Community Legal Centre; Carly Hanson, Community Legal Centres Queensland and Haatsari Marunda, a volunteer lawyer with HUB Community Legal.  Congratulations also to Bill Mitchell who received the Law Council President’s Award due to his outstanding service to the legal profession
• We launched the human rights toolkit.  The toolkit will help prepare CLCs for the implementation of the Human Rights Act in January 2020.

There's been a lot more going on here and across the sector. Please check out some of our members' successes and achievements below and thanks for your continuing support.

• What does a human rights-based approach mean for your organisation?
• The 46th Parliament - How to engage with the key players to create change 
• CLC Procurement 2019