Pay Your Rates, or the Council May Sell Your Home
Many are predicting that home loan interest rates will soon start rising again. The likely impact on many Australian families will be ‘mortgage stress’ - a financial burden that is set to become a big problem all around Australia, as...
Cardinal George Pell May Never Face Trial in Australia
Earlier this week, Victorian police confirmed they had received advice from the State’s Director of Public Prosecutions regarding historic allegations of child sexual assault against former-Sydney Archbishop George Pell. While police are yet to announce whether formal charges will be...
Intersectional Oppression in the Criminal Justice System
Intersectionality is the concept that people are made up of multiple social identities, such as gender, ethnicity, class and sexual orientation. These aspects of identity are not mutually exclusive. They intersect to form a whole, which differs from the separate components....
First Test for NSW Anti-Protest Laws
Three people from a small community in New South Wales are facing up to seven years in prison after protesting against expansion plans for a coal mine located near the tiny town of Wollar where they live. Bev Smiles, Bruce...
“Free My Father”: An Interview with Jewher Ilham
On September 23 2014, peaceful Uyghur rights advocate Ilham Tohti was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Xinjiang People’s High Court in western China on separatism charges. The two-day trial was condemned as “grossly unfair” by human rights activists around the world....
Welfare Drug Testing Is an Invasive Punishment of the Poor
During his budget speech, Australian treasurer Scott Morrison announced that the federal government will “commence a modest drug testing trial for 5,000 new welfare recipients.” And those with a positive test result will be put onto cashless welfare cards. Australian social...
The NSW Government’s ‘Justice’ Reforms: Part Two
As outlined in an earlier post, the NSW government recently announced a suite of new “justice” reforms, as part of its ongoing “tough on crime” stance. Not only is the government investing heavily in more prisons, its also strengthening the laws...
NSW Government’s ‘Justice’ Reforms: Part One
The NSW government is continuing its tough on crime stance. Last week, the Coalition announced it will be introducing a series of “tougher and smarter justice reforms,” which include tougher sentencing options, stricter rules for parole and more intense monitoring of...
Attacks on Muslims on the Rise: An Interview with Mariam Veiszadeh
Four Muslim women were randomly punched in the face in an Islamophobic attack out the front of Sydney’s University of Technology (UTS) last Wednesday. A 39-year-old woman from Paraguay allegedly assaulted each woman – one after the other – in a...
The Australian Prison Boom and the Need for Decarceration
The imprisonment rate in Australia has been on the rise since the 1970s. At present, it’s at an all-time high. As of June last year, there were 38,845 adult prisoners in Australian correctional facilities, which was an 8 percent increase on the year...
