Turnbull Continues Assault on Civil Liberties
On Tuesday, Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull delivered his National Security Statement before parliament. During his speech, the PM focused on the threat of terrorism, declaring that his government was committed to “balancing the priority of community safety with individual liberties.”...
Sydney’s Street Kitchen and Safe Space Going Strong, Despite Council Threats
Sydney’s 24-7 Street Kitchen and Safe Space has been providing the city’s homeless with meals and a sheltered area to sleep in since mid-December last year. Currently, the kitchen is dealing with an influx of people to feed, as the only...
Housing First: An Interview with Homelessness NSW’s Digby Hughes
Currently, there’s a video clip doing the rounds of Facebook that informs the viewer about Medicine Hat: a Canadian city that’s actually eradicated homelessness. To do this, the city has implemented a somewhat revolutionary, as well as rather obvious initiative. The traditional...
Prison for “Radicalised Inmates”: Protecting the Community or Increasing the Threat?
The NSW government announced last Sunday that it will be investing a further $47 million into the state’s correctional facilities in order to “future-proof” the prison system to prepare for a “new era of terrorist inmates.” The plan includes the construction...
Empowering Sex Workers: An Interview with Urban Realist’s Julie Bates
Amnesty International has formally adopted a policy to protect and fulfil the human rights of sex workers. This position includes calling for the decriminalisation of sex work, which they define as “consensual exchanges between adults.” The starting point of their policy is to prevent and redress the...
Treaty First: An Interview with Uluru Summit Delegate Fred Hooper
The Uluru Statement from the Heart was the culmination of a six month process that saw the Referendum Council traveling the country carrying out a series of dialogues with First Nations representatives to ascertain how Indigenous people should be recognised in the...
NSW Lawyer Struck Off For Producing False Evidence
On 19 April 1996, Mark Ireland was admitted to practice as a solicitor in New South Wales. Seventeen years into his career, the lawyer engaged in professional misconduct and was struck off the roll of legal practitioners on 26 May this year....
Silk Road Creator’s Life Sentence Fails to Deter Online Drug Transactions
Ross Ulbricht, founder of the online drug marketplace Silk Road, had his life sentence confirmed by a US Federal appeals court on May 31. Mr Ulbricht, known online as Dread Pirate Roberts, created the site in 2011. In its heyday, Silk Road...
From the Prison Cell to the Street and Back Again
Imprisonment rates in Australia are at an all-time high. At the end of March this year, there were 12,955 adult inmates in NSW correctional facilities, according to NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research figures. The overwhelming majority of these prisoners are...
Drug Driving Charges Are On the Rise
Back in December 2015, the NSW government announced it was tripling the amount of roadside drug testing police were carrying out annually to 97,000 tests by 2017. And not surprisingly, the amount of people being charged with drug driving has more than tripled....
