Articles by Paul Gregoire

Nineteen people from the island of Nauru are facing trial accused of public order offences following a protest against the Nauruan government on June 16 2015. Now known as the Nauru 19, the group were part of hundreds of locals who’d gathered to demonstrate. The protesters were making their way to Nauru parliament house to hold a ...

The UN Refugee Agency reports at least 420,000 Rohingya people have fled across the border from Myanmar into neighbouring Bangladesh since violence erupted in their homelands in late August. The refugees are now living in makeshift camps in the Cox’s Bazar district. IOM, the UN Migration Agency, has called for a coordinated response to the ...

Over the course of the year, politicians in Sydney and Melbourne have resorted to criminalising homelessness as a way of dealing with the increasing amount of rough sleepers turning up on city streets. Last month, the Berejiklian government passed a bill that broadened police powers to enable them to remove people from crown lands within ...

At 8pm on Thursday night, Catholic leaders across the Philippines rang their church bells simultaneously for five minutes to honour those who have died during president Rodrigo Duterte’s “reign of terror.” The ritual will take place for the next 40 days and is a call for the bloodshed to stop. The Philippine president won last year’s election ...

The Victorian prisoner population has been on the rapid increase since the late 1990s. In July 1998, there were 2,876 adult prisoners in the state’s correctional facilities, whereas in July this year, there was 7,152 inmates, according to Corrections Victoria figures. This marks a 148 percent increase over a 19-year period. And over recent years, this ...

The Therapeutic Goods Administration’s Special Access Scheme (SAS) is a formal arrangement that allows patients to import unapproved therapeutic goods into the country. There are two main pathways to access imported medicines via this scheme: category A and category B. Category A allows terminally ill patients fast access to imported products, as a doctor only ...

At 2.15 pm on Thursday, the High Court of Australia ruled against the challenge to the voluntary and non-binding marriage equality postal vote. As he sat in parliament, Malcolm Turnbull was told of the decision via text, which is a lot more instantaneous than snail mail. The prime minister rose to his feet and told ...

On 2 June 2011, the Global Commission on Drug Policy declared, “The global war on drugs has failed.” In its report, the commission found that prohibition has led to increased drug consumption, the growth of powerful crime networks and contributed to mass incarceration. In the wake of these outcomes – which originated from the 1961 ...

A non-profit mentoring program for young people leaving prison in WA is gaining national attention. Situated in the Perth suburb of Belmont, the Ngalla Maya program is in its third year of operation. And due to its success, it’s recently been granted federal government funding. Ngalla Maya provides support and training to mainly Indigenous youth at the ...

Violence has yet again erupted in Myanmar’s north western Rakhine state, as Rohingya insurgents carried out a series of coordinated attacks on 30 police posts and an army base on August 25. Staged in the townships of Maungdaw, Buthidaung and Rathedaung, the attacks have resulted in the deaths of 104 people, including 12 members of ...