Category: CLArion

It should be up to We The People to set priorities for a new federal government’s early actions, not political parties. Here’s a list of issues that need urgent attention from CLA’s viewpoint (you can bet mining and farming and fracking/gas and mining and coal industries don’t need to be on any priority list for assistance!). Meanwhile, in the West, CLA will launch a hard-hitting documentary early this month: in it, real people tell real-life stories of justice and legal system failure. Also, in this issue is a litany of neglect, ignorance, lack of caring and failure to allocate appropriate funding to juveniles: these are unconscionable ’state crimes’ against children in one of the world’s richest societies.

Australia’s governance system allows Ministers to impose over-the-top rules and regulations without Parliament able to have a say. The system should be changed, CLA says. In this issue, we report on the new ‘Right To Appeal’ laws in three states – they have not opened any floodgates: many wrongfully convicted people still languish in our jails. And we note that lawyer David McBride, the alleged whistleblower, is the only person so far charged over alleged murders and assaults on Afghan nationals by members of the ADF's SAS, despite four years of initial investigation and now a further 18-month (and counting) second internal inquiry.

As governments, national and state, and their police and security agencies continue to obfuscate about their malfeasances, Home Affairs supremo Michael Pezzullo claims we citizens have more to fear from the private sector than public sector ministers and mandarins. Is there a more dangerous man in Australia than he who controls criminal justice, emergency management, immigration, refugee claimants and citizenship, national security and ’social cohesion’? All under him, according to his website.

Throughout the world, journalists are dying to tell the truth: a record number of reporters are jailed. Australia Julian Assange has been locked up on a superseded bail offence by Australian ally and cricket competitor, England, for two years while being illegally sought for extradition rendition by another ally, the USA, which itself does not abide by the ‘rules’ it is trying to enforce on Assange. PM Scott Morrison: bring Julian home, before the 2022 federal election.

With The Voice to dominate 2023, CLA is concentrating on key national justice issues beyond the referendum. Since 2020, we have been lobbying hard behind the scenes on a Human Rights Act for Australia. To achieve the best possible version, we’ve helped produce major changes in the nation’s first HR Act, the one in the ACT, due to start in 2023 and operate fully in 2024. Also this year, CLA will focus on Failure To Disclose (FTD), the legal blight perpetrated mostly by prosecutors and police which makes our courts unfair and leads to miscarriages of justice, with taxpayers having to fund big compensation payouts.

• NACC and federal HRA create ethical infrastructure for Australia\
• hat Whitlam left to be done…
• New consultation focus is on implementation
• Parliament fails to safeguard human rights
• Bromley, 38 years in jail, about to get his day in High Court
• Attorneys-General and SCAG focus is on future law reform again
• Jails ready to burst: prepare to pay more taxe
• 87% want a vote on going to war: politicians refus
• Scotland raises age at which kids can be jailed
• NZ Hall case bares mistakes – or worse – by lawyers
• Canada rethinks VAD for the mentally ill

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CLA saw one of its prime recommendations adopted by the parliamentary Homelessness inquiry: we don’t often get a committee agreeing completely with us, but here we did. Also, the CLA Board has decided how we can operate more efficiently and therefore effectively in future, with details and the dates of a special general meeting set out in this issue. CLA member Barbara Etter and barrister Hugh Selby have exposed gross incompetence, and possibly worse, by the Tasmanian Office of the DPP and TasPolice in ‘evidence’ collected and filtered before tendering to the judge and  jury in the original trial of  Sue Neill-Fraser, now in her 13th year wrongly jailed. Her defence counsel was kept in the dark about some witness statements that could have helped her.