The White Australia Policy Part 1: Constructing Fortress Australia
“This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race,” remarked Australian PM John Curtin, following the outbreak...
NSW Government Wants “Retrograde” HIV Testing Laws: An Interview With ACON’s Brent Mackie
The Berejiklian government recently introduced a bill that requires people to undergo mandatory blood testing to see if they have a blood-borne disease - specifically HIV, hepatitis B and hepatitis C - if they deliberately expose a health, emergency or...
Lawyer Mark Davis on the Brereton Report, McBride and Assange
Released publicly on 19 November 2020, the Brereton report exposes the “warrior culture” prevalent amongst SAS troops deployed in Afghanistan between the years 2005 and 2016, which fostered the committing of war crimes and “a code of silence” to conceal...
Australian Soldiers Unlawfully Killed Civilians and Covered it Up
Released publicly on 19 November 2020, the redacted version of the Inspector-General of the Australian Defence Force Afghanistan Inquiry report - or the ‘Brereton report’ - is a 465 page document covering the findings of a four year investigation into...
Berejiklian Digs in Her Heels on Eliminating the Koala, As Greens Kill the Nats Bill
As NSW Liberal MLC Catherine Cusack told parliament on 19 November, Australia has a long history of killing off koalas, which was going on a century ago. Back in the day, it consisted of selling pelts to the UK and...
Barry Jones’ Summing Up of Australia’s “Unconscionable” Treatment of Refugees
Then Australian PM Malcolm Turnbull first spoke to Donald Trump in January 2017, as he wanted to square up that the newly-inaugurated president would stick to a deal negotiated with former head of state Barack Obama, involving the US resettling...
State-Sanctioned Sexual Assault: The Rally to Ban Strip Searches at Silverwater Gaol
As she stood at the entrance to Silverwater Correctional Centre on Thursday, Kat Armstrong said that it was within that very facility that she, as an inmate, was subjected to serious degradation under the guise of routine procedure that, as...
Self-Determination Upheld: An Interview With Brewarrina First Nations People’s David Kirby
The Brewarrina First Nations People announced on 13 November that they’ve rejected the state and federal government sponsored model of community-led representation under the Murdi Paaki Regional Assembly (MPRA). And instead, they’ll be upholding their right to self-determination. Citing ongoing...
Most Australians Supported the Lockdown, But Not the Police Overreach
“Even though Australians were overwhelmingly supportive of the lockdowns,” Civil Liberties Australia (CLA) CEO Bill Rowlings remarked last week, the public “can appreciate how the pandemic laws were pettily abused by police excesses”. And petty is the operative word Rowlings...
Reining in Police Powers: Shoebridge on His Drug Dog and Strip Search Bill
Over the last two years, unlucky commuters at Sydney’s Central Station have been confronted with NSW police officers accompanied by drug dogs. Deployed at peak hour, these officers have been equipped with screens, allowing them to strip search citizens if...
