The Right To Silence Across Australian Jurisdictions
The right to silence is not protected by the Australian Constitution, unlike in the United States where is is guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment to that nation’s constitution and reflected in what are commonly known as ‘Miranda rights’, also known...
The Criminal Offence of Contempt of an Australian Senate Inquiry
Despite having a multi-million dollar payout in his back pocket and a substantial free flights package with Qantas, the Australian Government apparently did not consider former Alan Joyce to be a ‘flight risk’ while organising a Senate Inquiry into Qatar...
What is the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission?
The Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (ACIC) was created on 1 July 2016 under the Australian Crime Commission Act 2002 (Cth)(‘the ACC Act’). It consolidated three former federal intelligence agencies: the Australian Crime Commission (ACC), the Australian Institute of Criminology (AIC)...
Attorney General Enacts “Bare Minimum” Protections for Public Sector Whistleblowers
One of the opening paragraphs of the explanatory memorandum pertaining to the amendments federal attorney general Mark Dreyfus has just made to the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (Cth) (the PID Act) is kind of humorous. The newly passed changes to...
Witness J: The Transcript of Australia’s Most Kafkaesque Trial Has Finally Been Released
ACT Chief Justice Lucy McCallum last week ordered the redacted publication of the previously withheld transcript relating to the 2018 secret trialling of Witness J, a former Australian military intelligence official, who was referred to as Alan Johns during court proceedings,...
Far Right Actors Mobilise on Australian Streets Against LGBTIQ Communities
This last weekend saw a disturbing trend in far-right mobilisations in Australia’s largest cities, as Christian Lives Matter took over Sydney’s Hyde Park and the National Socialist Network gave the Nazi salute outside Melbourne Parliament House, with both groups targeting LGBTIQ...
Australian Prison Life: Part 1, What’s Life Really Like Inside Prison?
This is the first of a three-part series about what happens inside Australian prisons. Each episode will also include a story of a particular inmate who makes life bearable for others. There was an American television show about policing which...
Corruption Pervades Police Forces in Australia and the United Kingdom: Part 1
It has been said that ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’, and perhaps the organisations which best establish the truth of this maxim are police forces and services, wherever they may be. This article seeks to set out how the corrupt activities...
Australia is “A Human Rights Pariah”: Senator Nick McKim on Evacuating Offshore Detainees to Safety
On the first day of 2023, Australia continued to hold 159 asylum seekers in offshore detention, with 92 of them in Papua New Guinea and 67 on Nauru. These people fled persecution in their homelands, arriving by boat in Australian...
Protecting Australian Whistleblowers: The Federal Roadmap Report
On the back of our nation’s chief lawmaker announcing that he’s set to overhaul federal public service whistleblower laws, which was made amidst rising calls to drop high-profile prosecutions, two of the nation’s experts on such protections have released a report on...
