NSW Government Continues to Reject Pill Testing, Despite Deadly Consequences
Commonwealth bank employee Kiernan Ngo became the latest person to die at a NSW music festival in drug-related circumstances, following the 26-year-old having presented at Bankstown Hospital at 1.30 am on 12 February, after he’d attended the Transmission event at Sydney...
Coronial Inquest Into First Nations Teen in State Care Triggers Concerns of Systemic Abuse
The recent Coronial inquest into the 2018 death of George Campbell heard that the Yuin Dunghutti and Tharawal teenager, who’d spent the majority of his seventeen years in state care, had likely been a casualty of systemic abuses within the...
The Advantages of Activists Self-Representing: An Interview With NT Lawyer Russell Goldflam
Over the last 12 months, several states tightened the screws on the ability of climate and environmental activists to raise awareness around these issues, via nonviolent civil disobedience actions that disrupt business as usual to capture public attention. The NSW Coalition...
The New Consent Directions in Jury Trials for Sexual Offences
The Crimes Legislation Amendment (Sexual Consent Reforms) Act 2021 (‘the Amending Act’) came into effect on 1 June 2022 (NSW), overhauling the definition of consent as it relates to certain sexual offences and revising the meaning of sexual intercourse, sexual touching and...
Australia is “A Human Rights Pariah”: Senator Nick McKim on Evacuating Offshore Detainees to Safety
On the first day of 2023, Australia continued to hold 159 asylum seekers in offshore detention, with 92 of them in Papua New Guinea and 67 on Nauru. These people fled persecution in their homelands, arriving by boat in Australian...
Former Sexual Assault Suspect Sues Media Giants for Defamation
A man whose career and reputation were ruined through heavily-biased media coverage of a claim of sexual assault in Parliament House, Canberra, has commenced defamation proceedings against mainstream media companies and its reporters. Bruce Lehrmann has filed two civil claims...
Police May Use Serious Crime Prevention Orders to Combat Domestic Violence
As domestic violence offences continue to decimate families and communities across New South Wales, police are desperately seeking to find solutions which could assist with prevention, particularly in cases where there is an identified repeat offender. During a recent four-day,...
Out of the Coalition Playbook: Albanese Blocks Deportation Loophole in Migration Law
The Albanese government quietly released 100-odd noncitizen detainees from immigration detention over Christmas-New Year 2022, with no official reason as to why. Instead, it was left to advocates to explain to the media that the move was connected to a recent court...
Wong Rules Out War Powers Reform, Despite Parliamentary Inquiry Underway
At its March 2021 national conference, federal Labor determined that, if elected into government, it would hold a parliamentary inquiry into whether war powers should be a whole-of-parliament decision and not, as is the case now, the choice of the prime...
The Duty of Care Owed by Corrections Officers Towards Prisoner Inmates
The preventable death of Indigenous woman Veronica Nelson at the Dame Phyllis Frost Detention Centre in Victoria, has understandably provoked concerns by prisoners (and their loved ones) over their safety whilst in custody. The law recognises that prison officers owe...
