Neil Gillespie, chief executive officer of the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement (ALRM) of South Australia, says state and federal governments have not provided enough funding for the Aboriginal Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (ATSILS) to seek justice for victims of the stolen generation.

Mr Gillespie says he has been wrongly accused of using ATSILS funding to pay for an advertisement that appeared in The Australian yesterday, but in fact the money came from his own pocket.

The page two advertisement, which "reluctantly and embarrassingly calls on the Australian community" to donate $750,000, coincides with the National Indigenous Legal Conference in Adelaide and a visit by Commonwealth Attorney-General Robert McClelland.

Mr McClelland told reporters in Adelaide yesterday the advertisement was not entirely correct in claiming funding had been static since 1996.

He said his predecessor, Bob Debus, had achieved an increase of about 30 per cent in one-off funding for the service in two years.

"That's not to say there's not an ongoing and ever-present need for resources, but I think ... Bob Debus in particular literally put his money where his mouth is," he said.

"We're in the process of renegotiating an agreement with community legal centres and legal aid commissions, and we're looking at what we can do to try to get that funding on a more sustainable basis."

Legal aid services across the country are understood to be struggling to gain the necessary funding to continue operating.