The head of the prime minister’s Indigenous Advisory council, Warren Mundine, said recent cuts to Indigenous legal services were not ideal, but tough decisions needed to be made given Australia's current debt levels.
Indigenous Australians are disproportionally affected by family violence with Aboriginal women 34 times more likely to be hospitalised than other Australian women.
The Aboriginal Family Violence Prevention Legal Service is one of many organisations worried its clients will be at risk following the cuts.
CEO Antoinette Braybrook said thhe service catered to those most in need.
"It's important to say that 90 per cent of our clients are Aboriginal women and children so the kinds of areas that we practice in are family violence law, child protection and family law and also compensation for victims of crime," she said.
"We've already got a significantly under-resourced program and to take more funding away from this program is absolutely devastating.
"And you know this isn't just about the loss of jobs, this is about access to justice for victims of family violence and access to justice, mostly for Aboriginal women and children."
The chair of the prime minister's Indigenous Affairs Advisory Council Warren Mundine said the message the federal government was sending to Indigenous Australians was that this is a new regime - one which must make budget cuts.
"The government is in a financial struggle with budgetary issues, Indigenous communities couldn't of been cocooned from that," he said.
"The good news in regards to some of them was that it wasn't worse as what some people thought it was going to be."
But Mr Mundine said the cuts to legal services is not where the government should be focusing.
