Left Unprotected: An Interview With People With Disability Australia’s Giancarlo de Vera
The understanding that elderly people and people living with disability were the two key demographics most at risk of contracting COVID-19, and further, that they have an increased susceptibility to greater harms on infection, has been well grasped since the...
As the ACT Moves to Fixed-Site Pill Testing, NSW Police Minister Doesn’t Get It
NSW police minister David Elliott took the opportunity of Sydney opening up from its extended lockdown to strengthen the understanding that he has no idea about the evidence behind the harm reduction intervention known as pill testing. Elliott told Sky...
COVID-19 Has Infected Medevac Refugees in Long-Term Hotel Detention
After 18 months of warnings, the inevitable has happened. A number of refugees who’ve been detained long-term by the Australian government have tested positive to COVID-19. These men are amongst the 50-odd majority Medevac refugees currently locked up in Carlton’s...
Public Interest Disclosure Laws Stall as Government Interest Reigns
High-profile whistleblowers prosecutions - or political prosecutions, as some prefer - have become a prominent feature of the rule of the Abbott/Turnbull/Morrison regime, along with the guarding of state secrets to the point that the proposition of open government is...
Calls on Police Minister to Curb Officers Flaunting Insignia Linked to White Supremacy
Reports of police officers wearing symbols associated with white supremacy or being captured on camera making symbols conveying the same racist message, have been increasing throughout a number of Australian jurisdictions over the past couple of years. The initial report...
Morrison Pushes Laws to Bury National Cabinet COVID Crisis Documents
At the state and federal levels, there were legislative mechanisms in place to respond to the public health crisis that is COVID-19. As these laws and regulations were drafted, the particular disease they would be applied to was unknown, but...
Police Profiling Intensifies Under COVID: An Interview With NUAA’s Dr Mary Ellen Harrod
The academic paper Policing Biosecurity sets out that of the people NSW police officers pulled up over a suspected COVID breach during the three months to 15 June last year, 45 percent were subsequently searched. However, in stark contrast, just...
Ban Pork Barrelling: Shoebridge on Laws to Criminalise the Shady Political Practice
The story is now well known. On 1 October, the Independent Commission Against Corruption announced it’s turning its investigation Operation Keppel upon then NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian’s conduct in relation to two specific instances of grants funding distribution. The ICAC...
Collaery Victorious: Court Rules His Prosecution Should Not Be Secret
The ACT Court of Appeal ruled on 6 October that concerns around the “very real risk of damage to public confidence in the administration of justice” trumped the “risk of prejudice to national security” in deciding to grant Bernard Collaery’s...
As PNG Offshore Detention Ends, Australia Abandons Its Remaining Detainees
Proving she’s just as substantial a human rights abuser as her predecessor Peter Dutton, home affairs minister Karen Andrews announced on 6 October that her government will be abandoning the remaining 120-odd asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea, after detaining...
