Government attempts to tackle the Mr Bigs of crime in Australia often end up punishing the Mr and Mrs Littles and their innocent children. At a parliamentary hearing, CLA CEO Bill Rowlings has called for uniform justice throughout Australia, laws which meet the high standards of international convention obligations we have signed, and removing mandatory clauses which prevent judges exercising the full range of punishment options.

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The USA is twisting time and reality – and torturing its own legal system – in trying to prosecute a man, Nashiri, before a military commission for a "war crime". The Saudi allegedly masterminded the bomb attack on the USS Cole warship in a Yemeni port in October 2000, which killed 17 Americans. He has been held for a decade, half of it in secret CIA prisons around the world, before finally being charged.

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Emergency terror laws enacted in fear and haste after "9/11" are coming up for mandatory review. It's time we got rid of laws, like preventative detention without charge, which "sits well outside conventional criminal law", according to the Speaker of the ACT Legislative Assembly, Shane Rattenbury. He speaks for everyone who yearns for a return to sensible laws in Australia.

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Australia has more anti-terror laws than comparable western countries; such laws undermine our democratic freedoms, academics agree. At some stage anti-terror laws in Australia could become part of the problem, and not the solution, Professor George Williams writes. What stage are we at, a decade after terrorists attacked America from the air?

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Responding to your report “Let jurors speak, says Lindy Chamberlain” by Subiaco Post (Perth) editor Brett Christian, 3 Sept 2011: I fully support Lindy Chamberlain Creighton’s call for jurors to be allowed to speak publicly and debate their verdicts. About 10 years ago jurors in WA were banned from disclosing discussions in the jury room. Lindy was promoting an international justice conference to be held in Perth on 8-10  March in 2012, organised by Justice WA.  

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There must be something drastically wrong with seizure and property forfeiture laws in Australia, as CLA and others have been saying for years, when even a normally non-controversial State Governor, the former eminent WA barrister Malcolm McCusker, is urging the local law profession to push for change. Read what 'The West' reported, and what letter writers, including CLA's Brian Tennant, had to say about the issue: see under 'WA'.

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It's fine for the community to give general guidance to judges as to what is "reasonable" in sentencing, CLA says: public discussion on such issues would be useful, and may help judges locally and nationally, CLA told the main ACT political parties. But law makers should not boost maximum potential sentences to try to force judges to send people to jail for longer...and mandatory sentencing should not even be contemplated, we told MPs.

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After four years of lobbying, CLA's proposal for the government to report details about people we extradite to face trial overseas has been adopted by the Attorney-General's Department. The AG's annual report will in future carry reports of extradition requests granted by Australia and other relevant follow-up information.
Read the Minister's letter to CLA »...