What Happens If a Domestic Violence Complainant Fails to Attend Court?
Criminal defence lawyers are often asked what will happen if the complainant - also known as the alleged victim - in a case involving accusations of domestic violence fails to attend the Local Court on the ‘hearing date’, which is...
Can Sending Excessive Text Messages Amount to a Criminal Offence?
Criminal defence lawyers are often called upon to represent clients in cases where there is animosity between two parties but no accusation of violence, deprivation of liberty or appropriation of property - but where the conduct which forms the basis...
Black Deaths in Custody Continue Decades After the Royal Commission
Two Indigenous men died in custody this week - one in New South Wales and the other in Western Australia, highlighting yet again the systemic racism and human rights abuses in prisons. In New South Wales, Wiradjuri man TJ Dennis...
The UN Human Rights Committee Finds Australia Violated Indigenous Peoples’ Land Rights
Weeks out from Australia holding a referendum on the Voice, an Indigenous advisory body to government, the UN Human Rights Committee (CCPR) has determined that our legal system has run roughshod over First Nations rights in a decision that happened to...
Shoebridge’s National Legalise Cannabis Bill Covers All Grassroots Wants and Concerns
After Australia legalised medicinal cannabis nationwide in October 2016, people who use the plant recreationally have been hesitant of political initiatives to legalise it, even though the lawful use of the fairly innocuous herb is the outcome they desire. And that’s with...
The Incremental Gifting of Australian Military Control to the United States Is Alive and Well
Veteran journalist Brian Toohey outlines in 2019’s Secret that US intelligence agents weren’t too keen on then Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam’s mid-1970s questioning of the viability of US government operations at local military installations at Pine Gap and North West...
Faehrmann Calls for Regulated Legal Cocaine in NSW, in the Wake of a Spate of Shootings
Released in June, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime World Drug Report 2023 outlines that the Australian use of the illegal drug cocaine is per capita the highest in the world, whilst Sydney has long been known as this nation’s capital of...
Fourth Police Officer Sentenced Over Killing of George Floyd
The fourth Minneapolis police officer prosecuted over the killing of George Floyd has been sentenced in the United States, bringing the criminal proceedings relating to perhaps the most publicised incident of police brutality since the horrific beating of Rodney King...
Property Recovery Orders in NSW: Getting Your Property Back in Domestic Violence Situations
In cases where Apprehended Domestic Violence Orders (ADVOs) are taken out in New South Wales, the courts and the police have powers to make arrangements for the parties to get their belongings back from one another through what is known...
Black Lives Still Matter: Dunghutti Activist Paul Silva Puts Aboriginal Justice Back on the Agenda
At inception, NSW law enforcement had a focus on quelling First Nations resistance to British takeover of Indigenous land, and, over 230 years later, an excessive and overtly brutal focus on those who never ceded control to the Crown continues to...
