“You Have a Right to Know”: An Interview With Witness J
The case involves Commonwealth orders that suppress the publishing of the identification of a former Australian intelligence official or the details of the charges that led to their imprisonment. Indeed, the details of the orders themselves are classified. Dubbed Witness...
Drop the Collaery Prosecution: An Interview With Australian Lawyers Alliance’s Greg Barns
As Australian barrister Bernard Collaery is set to stand trial in the ACT Supreme Court over charges of conspiring to communicate secret information, the Australian Lawyers Alliance (ALA) has stepped forward and called for his prosecution to be dropped. With...
Canada Accepts First Australian Refugee
In what’s believed to be a world first, an Australian citizen has been given asylum in a foreign country. As revealed by the ABC last week, Canadian authorities granted refugee status to a former Australian police informant who infiltrated an outlaw...
Barriers to Justice: An Interview with People With Disability Australia
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities was adopted on December 13 2006. It seeks to protect the rights and dignity of people with disability. Australia ratified the international human rights treaty on July 28 2008. Article...
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...
Australian Doctors Refuse to Be Silenced
As previously reported, Australian doctors have protested against laws embodied in section 42 of the Border Force Act 2015 (‘the Act’) which prevent “entrusted persons” from disclosing “protected information” about detention centres. The section prescribes a maximum penalty of two...
Would You Rather Be Suspected of a Crime in the US or Australia?
American ‘true crime’ shows often tell stories of defendants getting-off serious criminal charges due to problems with the evidence, or legal ‘loopholes’, or last-minute ‘breakthroughs’ by cunning criminal defence lawyers. Most people are aware that these TV shows aren’t an accurate...
The Evolving Legal Status of Aboriginals in Australia
High Court Justices Deane and Gaudron famously acknowledged how the law allowed extreme prejudice suffered by Indigenous Australians in Mabo v Queensland: “The official endorsement, by administrative practice and in judgment of the courts, of those two propositions [of terra...
The Protection of Police Informants and Prison Inmates: New Information Surrounding the Death of Carl Williams
If you’ve ever seen the hit TV series Underbelly or followed Melbourne’s notorious gangland killings, the name ‘Carl Williams’ might ring a bell. Williams was an underworld drug trafficker who was known to have a long-running feud with fellow drug...
Lawyers for NSW Crime Commission and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission Cases
The New South Wales Crime Commission and Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission (formerly the Australian Crime Commission) are criminal intelligence organisations established to investigate serious criminal activities, including drug importation and organised crime and in the case of the latter, activity...