Queensland May Finally Abolish Gay Panic Defence
After years of petitioning, the Queensland government has finally introduced a bill to abolish the antiquated gay panic defence. The state’s attorney-general Yvette D’Ath presented the Criminal Law Amendment Bill 2016 to parliament on Wednesday. Officially known as the homosexual advancement...
Sydney Lawyer ‘Struck Off’ for Stealing Client’s Money
Another NSW lawyer has been struck off for engaging in professional misconduct. This time it was Mr Thai Le Huu Nguyen. The Civil and Administrative Tribunal found him guilty on November 18 this year, for conduct it deemed to be...
Returning to Work after Cancer: An Interview with Professor Bogda Koczwara
In the past, the C word was something people didn’t like to discuss in polite company. However, with increasingly better treatments becoming available, cancer no longer necessarily marks the end of a person’s life. This year, the number of Australians...
South Australia Set to Overturn Discriminatory Laws
South Australia was the first state in the country to decriminalise homosexuality under Labor premier Don Dunstan on September 17, 1975. However, the state has lagged behind the rest of the nation in recent years when it comes to laws...
Euthanasia Laws: Conservative Politicians Defeat the Will of the People
Suicide is no longer a crime in Australia. If a person attempts to take their own life and fails, they will not face criminal charges for doing so, as they did in the past. Society now understands that survivors of...
West Papua: Australia’s Neighbour Under Siege
Indonesian police arrested 106 West Papuans praying in a park in the coastal city of Sorong in West Papua last Saturday. The group was celebrating the eighth anniversary of the West Papua Committee (KNPB): a non-violent organisation campaigning for self-determination....
Abolishing the Partial Defence of Provocation: An Interview with Dr Kate Fitz-Gibbon
The partial defence of provocation can be argued in a court of law when a person who’s killed another claims to have been provoked by the deceased in such a way that they lost self-control and were therefore less culpable...
An Unfair Dismissal? An Interview with Former Police Constable Hugh Brennan
We’ve reported on a number of police officers who’ve engaged in crime, corruption and other forms of misconduct, yet still been allowed to remain on the NSW Police Force. There are currently hundreds of officers on the NSW force with...
NSW Police Claim Credit for Solving Cold Case Murder
Quanne Diec left her parent’s Granville home for Strathfield Girls High School on the morning of July 27, 1998. But the 12-year-old vanished before she got to Clyde Station. On Sunday, police charged a 49-year-old man with the murder of...
History Repeats: Are We Heading Towards Another World War?
A fleet of eight Russian warships sailed through the English Channel late last month, on their way to the Mediterranean Sea. And while this body of water along the British coast is an international zone, Moscow’s show of strength raised...
