The Five Eyes Alliance Is Watching You
Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull met with his Canadian, UK and New Zealand counterparts for a security briefing at the UK National Cyber Security Centre on April 18. Along with the US, the four countries represented at the meeting make up...
Disability and Jury Service in NSW
The ACT Legislative Assembly has passed laws which broaden the range of people who can serve on a jury. People with disabilities will be no longer be automatically exempt from jury duty in the nation’s capital. Rather, courts will decide...
Courts Struggle to Interpret Emojis
Legal researchers at Melbourne and Deakin Universities have looked into the problems that arise when emojis are used in the courtroom as evidence. The study by Professors Elizabeth Kirley and Marilyn McMahon, entitled ‘The EmojiFactor: Humanizing the Emerging Law of...
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...
Calls for New Offence of ‘Industrial Manslaughter’
Families of deceased Victorian workers are leading the campaign for a new offence of industrial manslaughter to make corporate bosses responsible for deaths resulting from workplace negligence. 21-year old Jack Brownlee and 34-year old Charlie Howkins were laying pipes at...
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...
Stop the Mass Detentions: An Interview With World Uyghur Congress President Dolkun Isa
Thousands of Uyghur people rallied outside the European Commission in Brussels on April 27, calling on foreign governments to take a stand against the dentention of hundreds of thousands of their people in re-education camps by the Chinese government. Up...
Australia’s First Sanctioned Pill Testing Trial Is Just the Beginning
The resounding success of Australia’s first government-sanctioned pill testing trial at the Groovin the Moo festival in Canberra last Sunday drew a line in the sand of this nation’s harm reduction landscape. Before it took place, the voices of those...
Ford Fined a Fiesta
The Federal Court has ordered car manufacturer Ford to pay a $10 million fine after finding the way it responded to consumer complaints about PowerShift transmission systems (PST) was “unconscionable”. It has been reported that around 10,000 complaints were made...
