NZ and US Pass Laws to Reduce Smoking Harms, While Australia Makes it Harder to Quit
The NZ government launched its Smokefree Aotearoa 2025 Action Plan on 9 December. A decade in the making, the policy proposes to see less than 5 percent of the population smoking in four years’ time, within a country that sees a...
Have Yourself a Very Perrottet Christmas
As Dominic Perrottet took over the reins of the NSW Liberal Nationals government on 5 October, it was understood that the new premier was going to shift the decade-long conservative governance in this state a trifle further to the right…...
Road Fatalities on the Rise Despite COVID Lockdowns
Despite Covid lockdowns right across the country for large chunks of last year and the year before, road fatalities are on the rise. The pressure is now on governments at both the state and federal level to reassess road safety...
Calls to Legalise eScooters and to Increase Power and Speed Caps for eBikes in NSW
The New South Wales Productivity Commission has long urged a review of laws regulating eBikes and eScooters, citing economic, environmental, and public health benefits. Now, in 2025, these calls are being answered – with the NSW Government moving closer to...
US Votes Against UN Adopted Anti-Nazi Resolution, While Australia Abstains
The 76th session of the UN General Assembly last week adopted a resolution on “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”. Initiated by the Russian...
NSW Set to Criminalise Coercive Control
The New South Wales Government will soon begin drafting legislation aimed at criminalising coercive control. The new laws will create a standalone criminal offence for coercive control, in an attempt to deter such conduct and make it clear that such...
NSW Government Backflips on Speed Camera Warning Signs
The New South Wales Government is set to re-introduce speed camera warning signs across the state from February next year - backflipping on its November 2020 decision to take the signs off the road. The removal of warning signs was...
How the Overturning of the US Right to Abortion Could Bode for Australia
The 1973 US Supreme Court case Roe v Wade determined that a Texas law preventing abortion unless a women’s life was in danger was unconstitutional. And this finding established a national right to abortion, which prohibits states from banning it prior to foetal...
NSW Venues Divided Over Whether to Allow Access to Unvaccinated Persons
Despite the fact that as of 15 December 2021, unvaccinated New South Wales residents have been ‘permitted’ into pubs, clubs, cafes, restaurants and a range of other public settings, some businesses will continue to turn them away. Some businesses have...
Doctors Warn Assange’s Health Can’t Take Anymore AUKUS-Sanctioned Torture
The US and the UK governments have been slowly torturing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for the last decade via a range of measures, including the deprivation of liberty, prolonged isolation, medical neglect and an ongoing character assassination campaign. Successive Australian...
