Rights Commission Confirms Torture and Abuse Are Rife in Australian Detention
“Australia used to be a world leader in human rights” is a lament that’s often been used over recent decades, as the globe has looked on while successive local governments have illegally detained thousands of foreigners on remote islands in...
The Constitution “Has Never Been Part of Our Law”: Aboriginal Tent Embassy’s Jessica Savage on the Voice
PM Anthony Albanese announced on 30 August that this nation will be holding a referendum on whether Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples should be recognised in the Australian Constitution, with an accompanying constitutionally enshrined Indigenous voice to parliament. Many Indigenous...
Calls for a Royal Commission, as NSW Police Killing Spree Continues
A New South Wales police officer lethally tasered 95-year-old great-grandmother Clare Nowland, who suffered dementia, as she was approaching the officer holding a steak knife and using a walking frame to aid her. This incident, which took place in a...
The By-Design Lack of Federal Rights Protections Is Driving Australia’s Authoritarian Drift
“Australians are unaware of the vast inroads made into our civil liberties by the most authoritarian western democracy currently in the world: Australia,” ACT barrister Bernard Collaery told the Guardian in April. “Democratic Australians are just asleep at the wheel.” And he...
It’s Always Been About Treaty: Senator Lidia Thorpe on the Progressive Vote
Not having bothered to pay attention to the Coalition’s No campaign as it makes its usual racist claims, this time about an all-powerful Voice to Parliament dividing the nation, hearing leader Peter Dutton’s use of the word “squalor” in relation...
Climate Defender on Trial for Refusal to Disclose Device Passwords: Disrupt Burrup Hub’s Joana Partyka
National attention was drawn to the destructive nature of Woodside’s Burrup Hub project when Joana Partyka and a fellow Disrupt Burrup Hub activist defaced, but didn’t permanently damage, the famous Australian painting Down on His Luck at the Art Gallery...
The Deployment of ADF Troops for Domestic Disturbances is an Ominous Sign
The Australian Defence Forces alerted the Lismore public, via the local council’s Facebook page, that it would be in the vicinity of their town over 6 to 8 September conducting exercises, which would include “riot control” at Lismore Airport and “blank-fire...
The Bipartisan National Security Club Is Circling Independent Oversight Like a Vulture
The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security (PJCIS) is an old major party politicians’ club that’s charged with scrutinising any national security legislation and rubber stamping it prior to handing it back to parliament to be enacted. These are...
The NSW Drug Summit: Where Other Labor Leaders Triumphed, Minns Fears to Tread
A key objective of the 2023 NSW Labor policy platform stated that “a top priority” for the party on election would be to hold a state drug summit, so the experts can “advise on a wide variety of policy challenges”. This would...
Bipartisan Punishment of the Jobless Coexists with Necessary Unemployment Economics
Social services minister Amanda Rishworth was congratulating her government in July, after it budgeted for an unemployment benefit rise, which means that as of 20 September, those on base level JobSeeker will receive a $40 rise a fortnight and with indexation,...
