Thank you for your support of our end of financial year mythbusting campaign! If you want to find out more about our work and our mythbusting series, have a look at our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/halcnsw.

The HIV/AIDS Legal Centre (HALC) works to provide free and comprehensive legal assistance to people in Australia with HIV or hepatitis related legal matters and have been offering these services for nearly 30 years. HALC also tackles severe stigma and discrimination associated with HIV and Hepatitis by undertaking community legal education and law reform activities in areas relating to HIV and hepatitis. Our dedicated team of 7 solicitors and amazing volunteers deliver around 19,000 hours of legal support helping approximately 1,000 clients each year. In the financial year 2022/2023, HALC provided about 500 counts of legal advice and represented clients in over 350 court, tribunal and other representation cases.

HIV Stigma and discrimination disappointingly remains a common occurrence in Australia and HALC continues to work to tackle and eliminate the negative impact of discrimination and stigma faced by people living with HIV. Our end of financial year fundraising campaign this year aims to fundraise to represent clients in litigation relating to discrimination. These matters are often very time consuming and costly and we need your help to continue this vital work which often assists not just the individual affected but also the wider community of people living with and affected by HIV.

Here are some examples of the anti-discrimination work that we have done:

• helping David to keep his job as a laboratory technician - his employer wanted to fire him when he found out he had HIV;
• negotiating a successful outcome for Suzie, who was discriminated against by an acupuncturist on the basis of her HIV status;
• a number of cases challenging major insurers’ denial of income protection or life insurance for people living with HIV, despite PLHIV not having a dissimilar life expectancy or health outcomes to the general population.  

Whilst we do receive government funding, generous donations from members of the community who understand the importance of access to justice ensure that we can reach more people and engage in this vital and more time consuming work.

Your donation will enable us to continue to help fight against stigma and discrimination associated with HIV and Hepatitis.

Donations to HALC will enable us to continue to assist vulnerable people living with HIV including:

• a donation of $40 would cover the cost of a discrete legal advice to a person living with HIV on completing a pre employment medical where an employer is forcing unnecessary/unlawful disclosure of their HIV status.
• a donation of $250 would help to cover the cost of a HALC solicitor preparing a discrimination complaint to Anti-Discrimination NSW on behalf of a client who has been discriminated by a dentist and had their appointment moved to the end of the day due to their HIV status.
• a donation of $500 would cover the cost of our solicitors attending and representing a client at conciliation for a client who was dismissed from their job following taking a few days off after they were newly diagnosed with HIV and subsequently disclosing this to the employer.
• a donation of $25,000 (or more) would help to cover the cost of one of our solicitors representing our client before the NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal where our client was denied income protection by an insurer due to their HIV status.

Our campaign goal is to raise $15,000 to go towards representing clients in discrimination litigation.

HALC’s work is not limited to individual casework - we produce printed resources, contribute to the reform of laws that affect people living with HIV and run regular workshops for healthcare and legal professionals, university students and the wider community about HIV and the law.

We are supported by a dedicated team of remarkable volunteers who allow us to assist twice as many people as we would otherwise be able to. Our volunteers are recent law graduates, law students, and qualified solicitors and barristers, all of whom give up their time to help people with HIV.

Your donation, no matter how small, will help make a difference and allow HALC to continue our important work.

THANK YOU FOR ALL OF YOUR SUPPORT!