Throughout Australia, liberties and rights campaigners are using the Kathleen Folbigg pardon to highlight the need for a criminal cases review commission. Here, eminent civil libertarian and lawyer Terry O’Gorman explains why a CCRC is needed, and how one for Australia as a whole would work.
CLA is delighted modern forensic science has freed Kathleen Folbigg from jail and the the guilt of murdering her babies. Now it is time that up-to-date forensics in 2023 re-examine the Tasmanian case of Sue Neill-Fraser for previously tested and never tested evidence samples. SNF served 13 years in jail, is out on monitored parole for the next 10 years…and continues to maintain her innocence in what CLA believes was a wrongful conviction.
30 June is the last day to prepare a submission on a proposed federal Human Rights law. Please get your supportive sub in, even if only a letter, or a short comment. Meanwhile, AG Mark Dreyfus is reforming the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, appointing a new head and planning new appointments, based on merit. The ACT is raising the Minimum Age of Responsibility for Children to 14, and will join SA, Tasmania, Victoria and WA with a legislated second and subsequent ‘Right To Appeal’ where there’s a substantial miscarriage of justice. Also in this issue:
How is Australia improving – or otherwise – as a nation and a society? Are we becoming a fairer, more equal place to live, concentrating on what produces better outcomes for people? Is our traditional narrow focus on GDP doing us a disservice as a people? CLA’s HR Campaign Manager
More details are emerging on how public consultation over a Human Rights Act for Australia will get under way: you can express your support in a submission to the parliamentary committee by 1 July 2023, so please do, even if it is just a one-page letter. Meanwhile, secret trials, indefinite detenton, vague laws, forensics problems and more Indigenous people being jailed are among the concerns in this issue, not to mention a swathe of government departments and agencies failing to act, acting inappropriately of refusing to meet mandatory deadlines for providing public information to the people they supposedly serve.
Research by two eminent UNSW academics has proven that Australia has ‘a criminal justice system that is far from just’. In simple words, they outline the problems clearly and precisely, and call on governments and agencies trhoughout Australia to become more accountable for their actions, and inaction.
The Australian Parliament wants to know whether Australia should have a Human Rights Act (HRA)…which could be enacted by December 2024. The Committee on Human Rights invites submissions until 1 July 2023, then will hold hearings until December 2023, reporting to the Parliament by 31 March 2024. That would leave nine months for the Albanese government to legislate a federal HRA for Australia in 2024, before the next national election, likely in early 2025. CLA has been one of the most active campaigners for a HRA over the past three years and, with other activists and supporters, is celebrating interim success. Some 73% of Australians support Australia having a HRA: just 3% oppose one.
Stephen Langford faces a magistrate’s court in Sydney in April…simply for fleshing out more of the history of one of the first governors of NSW, Lachlan Macquarie. CLA is hoping the magistrate’s gives him the same type of second chance Governor Macquarie gave to Edward Eagar some 200 years ago,
As part of CLA’s campaign to improve mandatory disclosure by police and prosecutors throughout Australia, we are monitoring what the legal profession is saying. Here’s some comments from Tasmanian barristers, including that local magistrates say Tasmania Police treats courts with contempt. If so, perhaps a magistrate will have the courage to charge Police Commissioner Donna Adams with contempt of court?
The Voice campaign for a special Indigenous path to parliamentary debate launched in February. The first official call for a federal Human Rights Act is expected when the Australian Human Rights Commission tables its ‘Free & Equal’ report, four years in the making, in the first week of this month. Meanwhile liberties and rights, particularly of children, are under increasing threat from a combination of vigilante social media activist campaigns and state governments and oppositions ramping up ‘order and law’ issues ahead of elections.
