What Disqualifies or Exempts a Person from Serving as a Juror in NSW?
The rules relating to jury service in New South Wales are primarily regulated by the Jury Act 1977. Section 5 provides that every person who is enrolled as an elector for the Legislative Assembly of New South Wales is qualified...
Another Ballarat Police Officer Accused of Brutality
Ballarat police have been under intense scrutiny in recent times, after a number of videos emerged of officers engaging in acts of brutality against members of the public. One of those videos shows officers dousing a handcuffed woman with pepper...
Changes to NSW Sentencing Options: Broadened Intensive Correction Orders
The NSW Parliament assented to the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Amendment (Sentencing Options) Act 2017 (the Act) on 24 October 2017, which amends the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (the Sentencing Act) as it relates to the sentencing options available to...
Concerns for the Mental Health of Magistrates
There are calls for a review of the workplace health and safety of members of the judiciary, with the recent deaths of two Victorian magistrates raising concerns about their mental wellbeing. The sudden passing of magistrate Stephen Myall just weeks...
Tough New Laws Proposed for Corporate Crime
With revelations of systemic corporate misconduct surfacing during the current Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry (‘the Banking Royal Commission’), the federal government is proposing to increase penalties for criminal offences under the Corporations...
AMP May Face Criminal Charges
Senior Council Rowena Orr QC says financial services provider AMP could face criminal charges for making misleading statements to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). Misconduct findings The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry...
Australian Pensioners Living in Poverty
A Darwin rental property manager won social media hearts recently when she successfully crowdfunded her client’s rental arrears after his pension was cut off. Centrelink debacle Derek Holbrook lives alone in Darwin. His pension recently came up for review under...
No More ‘Section 10 Bonds’ in NSW
On 24 October 2017, the NSW Parliament assented to the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Amendment (Sentencing Options) Act 2017 (the Act) which, as the name suggests, amends the Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (the Sentencing Act) in respect of the sentencing options...
Government Wants Crime Commission to Lose Its Ability to Investigate
The New South Wales Crime Commission is a statutory body established by the state government in 1986 to, as its motto says, ‘Analyse. Investigate. Confiscate’; that is, to analyse and investigate serious criminal activity, and confiscate proceeds of crime. The...
Wrongly Convicted Man Awarded $1.5 Million
A cognitively-impaired Indigenous man who spent nearly five years in a Western Australian prison for a crime he didn’t commit has received compensation. The Western Australian government has provided a cognitively-impaired Indigenous man with an ex gratia payment of $1.5...
