“The Coal Industry is Dead”: An Interview With Miner Turned Activist Micah Weekes
At around 6 am on 13 September last year, anti-coal protester Micah Weekes climbed on top of a 13,000 tonne freight train on Sandgate Bridge, Newcastle, with the aim of preventing it and other coal trains from making it to...
Empowering First Nations Kids to Hold Police Accountable: An Interview With ALS’ Jeremy Styles
NSW authorities had 237 youths detained in state juvenile justice centres in September this year, according to NSW Bureau of Crimes Statistics and Research figures. And of these young inmates, 105 were First Nations youths, which accounts for 44 percent...
The Wild Horses Sting? Police Breath and Drug Test Patrons Evacuating Festival
At around 9.30 am on Monday 9 December, word went around punters camped out at the Wild Horses festival in Victoria’s Marysville that an announcement had been made regarding an alleged police order that the site be immediately evacuated due...
Get Your Priorities Right, Scott Morrison
While the eastern side of the country was burning like never before, some of the old boys’ club were sitting in the backroom of parliament house inhaling some refined pure white Christian prejudice in legislative form. It was the best...
Victorian Sex Workers Demand “Full” Decriminalisation
Sex work is work, no matter which way you look at it. Workers in the sex industry get paid for providing a service. And yet, they’re not afforded the same rights and protections as other workers. Indeed, in many cases,...
NSW Justice Amendment Package Part 2: More Powers for Corrective Services and Sheriffs
It’s been another huge year in NSW parliament. The focus this time, however, wasn’t so much on rights eroding counterterrorism legislation, but the further stripping of civil liberties through last month’s enactment of the anti-protest Right to Farm Bill 2019....
Drug Policing Causes Most of the Harms: An Interview With Former Police Sergeant Greg Denham
Last August marked the 50th anniversary of one of the most significant music festivals of all time, Woodstock. The four day event involved the coming together of close to half a million people, and as is well-known, the hippies that...
Landmark Victory for Police Corruption Whistleblower: An Interview With Rick Flori
The Queensland Court of Appeal ruled on 3 December that a 2010 letter that well-known police corruption whistleblower Rick Flori had written to the state oversight body now referred to as the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) was a valid...
Could NSW Police Officers Be Getting Off on Strip Searches?
It’s commonplace these days to hear the ever-increasing practice of strip searching the public likened to a form of state-sponsored sexual assault. And the thing with this sort of violation is perpetrators get off on it. State police watchdog the...
Officers Who Report Police Misconduct Must Be Protected, Court Rules
In late February 2010, the Crime and Corruption Commission (CCC) received a public interest disclosure letter relating to the conduct of two police officers that then Queensland police sergeant Rick Flori asserted had been involved in official misconduct. The letter...
