Balgo Residents Face Extended Travel for Court Access Amid Closures

Residents of the remote Kimberley community of Balgo will have to travel for almost half a day to access court from June 1, due to a statewide court shutdown.

This has raised concerns residents have been unfairly disadvantaged by missing out on court dates and receiving arrest warrants due to access issues.

The community, where the local court has been suspended for almost two years, is one of several likely to be impacted by the decision to close regional and remote courtrooms for at least three months due to a lack of security.

For almost two years, residents of Western Australia's tiny desert community of Balgo have had to make a gruelling eight-hour round trip just to get to court.

From June 1, the journey to justice will only get longer after Western Australia's top judges released a public notice saying many courthouses in regional and remote areas will close for at least three months from due to a lack of security.

Balgo is some 3,000 kilometres north of Perth.

In-person court sittings and trials for the East Kimberley community have been suspended for more than two years due to security concerns, forcing residents seeking justice to drive along the unsealed Tanami Road to the court in Halls Creek, which is about four hours away.

The distance meant some people couldn't make it to their hearings.

Now, matters are likely to get worse as the Halls Creek court is one of the courtrooms set to close, with hearings and trials redirected to larger regional courtrooms.

"If they close Halls Creek, the nearest one will be Kununurra or Broome, so Kununurra is 700kms, Broome is 960kms," said Michael Hickey, chief executive of the Wirrimanu Aboriginal Corporation which runs Balgo.

" How are they going to get there? "

Mr Hickey said the long-term suspension of the local court has already had a "big impact" on residents, with concerns that similar effects will be felt across the state.

"A lot of community members can't get out of Balgo to get into Halls Creek or Kununurra for their court dates because they don't have vehicles and half the time family can't get them out," he said.

"So they miss their court date, then they have a warrant against them or sometimes they can be arrested for not having turned up to court.

"It has a very big impact on the community for sure."

Unfair to community

Before the suspension, lawyers and magistrates travelled to Balgo once a month.

Mr Hickey said the absence of this face-to-face contact had unfairly impacted residents.

"When you're doing it by phone or whatnot, they don't have the trust in that call."

" They like that face-to-face contact and be able to [have it] explained what's going on. "

In October, Aboriginal Legal Service WA's legal services director Peter Collins wrote to the state's attorney general and police minister describing the situation as "unacceptable" and urged for in-person court sittings to resume.

At the time, the Department of Justice told the ABC that court matters in Balgo continued to be heard via video link.

But Mr Hickey said there was often not enough resources available to enable video link calls into other court rooms possible.

"We don't even have that at the moment, that's not even happening," he said.

"At the moment, it's a very big impact on the community."