Articles by Paul Gregoire

The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) released an interim decision last year that would see amyl nitrite and other alkyl nitrite inhalants banned. This means these substances popularly referred to as poppers would be moved into schedule 9 of the Poisons Standard along with drugs like heroin. The use of nitrite inhalants is popular amongst gay and bisexual ...

The Law Enforcement Conduct Commission announced at the end of October that it was launching an investigation into the use of strip searches by NSW police. The inquiry is in response to growing allegations that officers are abusing their powers. This was against a backdrop of a growing awareness that strip search use is increasing in ...

Last year, 69 women were killed violently across Australia. This brings the murdered women death toll in this country since 2012 to 506, according to Counting the Dead Women Australia project researchers from gender equality group Destroy the Joint. And in the overwhelming majority of these cases, the perpetrators were men who were known to their victims. The ...

As the nation was still recovering from the holiday season, Australian home affairs minister Peter Dutton announced a proposal to establish a national public register of child sex offenders, which would make information about convicted criminals available online. Describing it as “the toughest crackdown on paedophiles in Australia’s history”, Dutton told reporters on 8 January that ...

Iconic Sydney protester Danny Lim has been brightening the lives of city commuters for years now with his sandwich board signs emblazoned with colourful political messages designed to make a point as well as produce a smile from the passersby. However, last Friday morning, several NSW police officers decided it was time to give the former ...

Next month marks five years since the Liberal Nationals government put a gun to the head of Sydney’s nightlife and pulled the trigger. Many Sydneysiders thought the lockout laws would never stick around very long, but today, they remain. The pretext to the lockout laws was the one punch deaths of two 18-year-olds on the ...

Over the last half decade, reports have indicated that the use of strip searches by NSW police following a positive indication from a drug detection dog has been become more routine. This is especially disconcerting as sniffer dogs get it wrong two-thirds to three-quarters of the time. Then it became apparent last July that the police have ...

Carla Hales was killed with an axe in her home in the Perth suburb of Munster on 28 December last year. The 30-year-old woman was hacked to death by Jesse de Beaux, an unknown assailant, who’d was released from a nearby hospital a day earlier after being a voluntary mental health patient. Ms Hales death brought ...

NZ police minister Stuart Nash said last week that he thinks independent pill testing tents are “a fantastic idea and should be installed at all our festivals”. He added that a “more compassionate and restorative approach” to illicit drugs should be taken, considering the drug war “hasn’t worked”. The minister made these remarks after he observed police ...

National Justice Project principal solicitor George Newhouse filed two class actions on 7 December with the High Court of Australia, claiming the federal government’s treatment of asylum seekers and refugees in offshore detention amounts to crimes against humanity and torture. The two separate lawsuits relate to the around 1,200 detainees still being held in offshore ...