By Sonia Hickey and Ugur Nedim It has been reported that the Queensland Freedom of Information Office (QFOI) and the State’s Police Force (QPS) are working together to prevent citizens from accessing their own personal data. Restricting access to information The Queensland Police Records and Information Management Exchange (QPrime) database stores a range of personal ...
Category: Criminal Law
#Nuns Too Speak Out About Their Sexual Abuse at the Hands of Catholic Priests
Senior Catholic Church officials from around the world are due to meet in Rome later this month to discuss their response to the sexual abuse crisis that has engulfed the institution. Although until recently, the primary focus has been the sexual abuse of boys by priests and other Church members, women are now also beginning ...
What is Grievous Bodily Harm in Criminal Law?
17-year old Brae Lewis and his 15-year old girlfriend, Kyesha Finemore, had a tumultuous relationship involving frequent arguments and even physical violence. But on a fateful day in May 2016, the level of violence went to a whole other level. During an argument, Brae doused his partner with petrol before “flicking” a lighter which caused ...
Sydney Criminal Lawyers® Weekly Rundown – Articles from 11 to 17 February 2019
In case you’ve missed any of them, here’s a rundown of the past week’s articles: Banking Executives Expected to Face Criminal Charges The Royal Commission has recommended criminal charges against top banking executives. Click here to read the article Criminal Lawyers Suspected of “Appalling” Misconduct A further five Victorian lawyers may have been on the ...
Justice Now for David Dungay: An Interview With Leetona Rose Dungay
David Dungay Jr called out that he couldn’t breathe a total of twelve times, as six prison guards held him face down on a bed in the prone position. One of the officers said, “If you can talk, you can breathe.” However, medically-speaking, this isn’t the case. The disturbing CCTV footage of the 26-year-old Dunghutti ...
Supreme Court Justice Criticised for Divisive Remarks About Islam
Remarks made by NSW Supreme Court Justice Desmond Fagan in relation to the interpretation of “hostile passages” in the Quran have caused outrage amongst the local Muslim community, as well as sparked calls from the NSW legal profession for greater understanding of Islam. Justice Fagan said on the 31 January that a number of NSW ...
Laws Empowering Government to Revoke Citizenship May be Unconstitutional
By Zeb Holmes and Ugur Nedim The Morrison government announced late last year it would be passing legislation to lower the threshold for stripping Australians suspected of terrorist activity of their citizenship. The Federal Labor Party has now signalled its intention to oppose the measure after receiving legal advice that the new legislation may be ...
The Panama Papers: A Lesson in Tax Avoidance
An Oxfam report released on 20 January revealed that last year 26 billionaires owned the same amount of wealth as the poorest 3.8 billion people around the globe. This was down from 43 individuals the year before. And this extreme wealth disparity is accelerating every year. As has been exposed over recent times, some amongst the ...
Government Breaks Promise to Crackdown on Tax Avoidance by Multi-Nationals
By Zeb Holmes and Ugur Nedim The federal government has broken a promise to establish a public register of overseas shell companies owned by companies operating in Australia. The proposal was intended to assist in the detection and prosecution of illegal activities such as tax evasion by multi-national companies, as well as inform legislation designed ...
Another Casualty of the War on Festivals: An Interview With a Psyfari Organiser
At the moment, the NSW Liberal Nationals government is conducting an all-out assault on this state’s festival industry. And the reason why it’s doing it, is it can’t deal with the fact that in order to stop drug-related deaths, it needs to allow people to test the contents of something that’s illegal. Instead, Berejiklian and ...