Desperate Detainees Riot on Christmas Island Over Indefinite Detention
Two of the three compounds currently in operation at the Christmas Island immigration facility were set ablaze in the early hours of Wednesday morning, as a small number of detainees protested against their unjust and indefinite detention. The demonstrators are...
Where Has All the Legal Medicinal Cannabis Gone?
A patient who uses medicinal cannabis to treat their ailments recently remarked in a social media forum that at present it’s taking their chemist at least two weeks from payment to fill their prescription for cannabis medicine. “They wonder why...
The Indefinite Detention Achilles Heel: An Interview With Human Rights For All’s Alison Battisson
The Magna Carta is a charter of rights that was drafted by the court of King John of England in 1215. And to this day, the eight-century-old document provides the foundational legal principles of our modern Australian democracy, including that...
Improving the Lot of Transgender Inmates: An Interview With NSWCAPP’s Keith Quayle
Part 3.8 of the Custodial Operations Policy and Procedures of Corrective Services NSW (CSNSW) outlines how prison authorities deal with transgender and intersex inmates. It aims to achieve best practice, non-discrimination, safety and security. The policy stipulates that a transgender...
UK Refuses to Extradite Assange to the US, For Now
“I find that Mr. Assange’s risk of committing suicide, if an extradition order were to be made, to be substantial,” said UK Judge Vanessa Baraitser in her 4 January-delivered final findings into the US extradition case against Australian journalist Julian...
NSW to Expand the Prison System, Yet Again
As Sisters Inside chief executive Debbie Kilroy put it to Sydney Criminal Lawyers in early 2017, building more prisons doesn’t alleviate overcrowding in the system, rather it simply means that fresh inmates are needed to fill vacant beds, with new...
Independent OPCAT Inspections Will Improve the Plight of Youth Detainees
Situated in the northern NSW town of Grafton, the Acmena Youth Justice Centre is one of six juvenile prisons being operated by Youth Justice NSW. At capacity, it holds 45 boys between the ages of 10 to 21 years. Over...
Why Are Australian Governments Constructing the Surveillance State?
Peter Dutton saw his ASIO Bill passed on the last parliamentary sitting day for 2020. The home affairs minister most likely had a rare smile upon his face whilst exiting the chamber, as the nation’s domestic spying agency had been...
Federal Government’s New IR Laws: Further Weakening Employee Protections
Despite all the horrors and restrictions of the COVD-19 pandemic period, there was a positive moment towards the beginning that saw the federal Coalition displaying concerns about how everyday Australians on the ground were going to cope with the accompanying...
War Resumes in Occupied Western Sahara: An Interview With Polisario’s Kamal Fadel
Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR) president and Polisario Front leader Brahim Ghali ended the 1991 ceasefire agreement between his Sahrawi independence forces and the Moroccan army, which has occupied most of Western Sahara since 1975. Ghali brought the 29-year-long truce...
