PM offers slim hope for deaths hotline

There is a slim chance Prime Minister Tony Abbott might intervene to save a telephone service credited with reducing the number of Aboriginal deaths in custody.

The service has been running for 15 years in NSW and the ACT, during which time there has been no aboriginal deaths in police custody in those jurisdictions.

"It's got to be working well and it's got to be supplying a contemporary need," Mr Abbott told reporters in Canberra on Thursday when asked about plans to cut its federal funding from the end of June.