NSW Courts Refuse to Convict Homeless Man
In February 2012, Mr Lanz Priestley was charged with two offences for “staying overnight” in Sydney’s Martin Place on two consecutive evenings. The City of Sydney council had erected notices in the public mall prohibiting “camping or staying overnight” in the...
Bringing the Gift of Education to Impoverished Children
Bangladesh is a remarkable country, but it is plagued by desperate poverty. Formerly East Pakistan, it became Bangladesh in 1971 after a war of independence. The country is located on the Indian subcontinent and has a population of more than...
Treaty Now! Uluru Summit Rejects Constitutional Recognition
Last week’s Uluru summit was the culmination of a six-month process that saw the Referendum Council travel the country carrying out the dialogues. These were a series of twelve meetings of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to discuss the issue...
Supporting Criminalised Women: An Interview with Flat Out’s Jake Argyll
The Australian prison population is at an all-time high. At the end of June last year, there were 38,845 adult prisoners in Australian correctional facilities. Women accounted for 3,094 of them, which is 8 percent of the overall adult prison population. But...
Youths Sue Australian Government for Being Detained with Adults
A group of more than 100 Indonesian youths are pressing ahead with a class action law suit against the Australian Government, claiming they were imprisoned alongside adults when they should not have been. The Australian Government wants proceedings dropped, saying...
Reducing Indigenous Youth Incarceration: An Interview with Just Reinvest’s Sarah Hopkins
There’s a glaring overrepresentation of young Indigenous people in the NSW prison system. While Aboriginal young people make up around 3 percent of the general population, they account for 51 percent of youths being held in juvenile detention. At the...
‘No Body, No Parole’ Laws: Closure for Victims or Injustice for Wrongly Convicted?
As recently reported, the NSW government’s ‘justice reforms’ will include a proposal for new laws to prevent people who are convicted of murder and manslaughter from being released on parole unless they reveal the location of the deceased’s body. Victims’...
A Changing Profession: Robot Lawyer Gives Advice to Asylum Seekers
The online sensation DoNotPay has been dubbed the world’s first robot lawyer, and is now giving out free legal advice to asylum seekers via Facebook. The app, which was originally developed by a Stanford University student, and which has successfully...
Australian Government Refuses to Defend Julian Assange
In 1987, a plucky, young lawyer from Sydney fronted the British press and rallied against the government’s censorship of free speech. The young lawyer’s argument? That former MI5 agent Peter Wright’s novel, ‘Spycatcher’, should be published because people had a...
Beware: Online Banking Scam Targets Australia
Online scams are prolific nowadays, costing individuals, banks and the economy billions of dollars every year and causing damage to unsuspecting victims that can last for years. Hundreds of thousands of people are only just beginning to recover from the...
