The Campaign Against Drug Testing of Welfare Recipients
As part of the May budget, the Turnbull government announced its controversial plan to drug test people who are in receipt of social security. Australian treasurer Scott Morrison described it as a “modest drug testing trial” for 5,000 new Youth Allowance and...
Turnbull Drags His Heels on Same-Sex Marriage
Prime minister Malcolm Turnbull announced on Monday that his government was reintroducing legislation to enable a national plebiscite on same-sex marriage. The bill – which is to be debated this week -is expected to be rejected by the Senate once more, as...
Martin Place Rough Sleepers Agree to Move, But There’s Nowhere to Go
It seems the City of Sydney has had a change of heart in regards to the Martin Place homeless camp. Rather than trying to move them on, Sydney lord mayor Clover Moore announced on Monday evening that she’d negotiated a solution...
Appeal Court Finds GBH Sentence Inadequate, But Does Not Resentence
At 6.43 pm on 6 February 2015, Craig Lulham sent a text message to Bill, the husband of his friend Allison’s mother. It stated, “Bring the cops. I don’t care. It won’t stop me from smashing you are [sic] face...
The Massacres That Led to Tighter Gun Control in Australia
The National Firearms Agreement (NFA) established tighter firearm control laws back in 1996. This led Australian gun laws to become the envy many other countries. But over the following twenty years, these laws have slowly been eroded. And this has much...
Government’s Ban on ‘Stop Smoking Aid’ Makes No Sense
Over three million Australians continue to partake in one of the most deadly habits around. Although smoking rates have fallen dramatically in recent decades, the last national survey found that 15.6 percent of the adult population are still lighting up. Two...
Changing Attitudes: An Interview with Domestic Violence NSW CEO Moo Baulch
Last Saturday, NSW Labor committed to introducing 10 days’ paid domestic and family violence leave. The move follows a campaign launched in July by the Australian Council of Trade Unions to have the leave enshrined in the national employment standards...
Premier Demands that Council Moves-On Martin Place Rough Sleepers
NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian told reporters this week that the Martin Place rough sleepers make her feel “completely uncomfortable.” But that’s to be expected. As NSW MPs are confronted with the state’s homelessness crisis directly across the road from Parliament House, it’s...
The Dangers of a Blanket Ban on Synthetic Drugs
“The global war on drugs has failed,” the Global Commission on Drug Policy declared on June 2 2011. The panel of world leaders and intellectuals outlined in its report that prohibition has led to increased drug consumption, fostered powerful crime networks...
Police Back Down on Sniffer Dogs: An Interview with MLC David Shoebridge
NSW police have begun to back off with their drug detection dog operations. The latest figures suggest that the number of searches carried out by police after a positive indication from a sniffer dog has almost halved over the last six years....
