Identify and Disrupt: Dutton to Further Extend Surveillance State Reach
Home affairs minister Peter Dutton and department secretary Mike Pezzullo have again been tinkering away at the legislative framework governing the nation’s internal security apparatus to produce yet more legislation containing laws designed to further empower police and intelligence. Introduced...
Just Another Day in the Colony: State Violence Towards First Nations Continues
Just released by the ABC, March 2018 CCTV footage showing NT police assaulting and abusing young First Nations boys in the Alice Springs lockup is not only sickening, but it’s yet more proof that while many consider the colonial project...
So, This Is Xmas: Refugee Rights Rally at the PM’s Horizon Church
The Biloela family - Nades, Priya, and their daughters: 5-year-old Kopika and 3-year-old Tharunicaa - are about to spend their third Christmas locked up in immigration detention. And this is despite them having lived amongst the community in central Queensland...
No Longer a Taboo: Psychologist Carly Schrever on Judicial Stress and Wellbeing
In a 1995 speech delivered in Hawaii, former High Court of Australia Justice Michael Kirby set out that “the general deference formerly paid to judges has been eroded” and “attacks on judges have now become commonplace”. He added that much...
Drug Law Reform Is Desperately Needed, Yet Berejiklian Refuses to See Reason
The Australian response to the COVID-19 pandemic for the most part has been successful and a very welcome change as science and public health advice is given its due prominence in such health policy decisions. The need for greater investment...
War Powers Should Rest With Parliament: An Interview With Senator Jordon Steele-John
Then PM Tony Abbott withdrew Australia’s last combat troops from Afghanistan in late 2013. It marked the end of our nation’s longest engagement in a specific conflict. However, Australian troops were still deployed to the country in a training capacity...
Toxic Culture Persists Within the NSW Police Force
The New South Wales Police Force has dismissed two police officers after it was discovered that at least nine officers from Botany Bay Local Area Command started a closed WhatsApp group in 2017, in which they exchanged numerous sexualised, inappropriate...
Police Officer Threatens to ‘Belt the F***’ Out of Indigenous Teens
Shocking CCTV footage from the Alice Springs watchhouse showing a police officer shoving and verbally abusing a teenage boy before threatening to “belt the fuck out” of three others has emerged this week. The footage was taken in 2018, but...
What is a Defended Hearing in New South Wales?
Australian actor Craig McLachlan has been found not guilty of 13 criminal charges, stemming from allegations made by four fellow cast members of The Rocky Horror Show. Mr McLachlan, probably best known for his television roles in Neighbours, Home and...
Tony Mokbel’s Drug Conviction Quashed
And so the fallout from the Lawyer X scandal continues. Drug kingpin Tony Mokbel has had his conviction for the importation of cocaine quashed by Victoria’s Court of Appeal as a result of the Lawyer X scandal, on the basis...
