State and Territory Governments in Australia are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on locking juvenile offenders behind bars, when diversion programs are both cheaper and more effective. Mission Australia, like CLA, calls for targeted reduction of…
Teenage years are for experimenting, and doing ‘stuff’ that’s blush-making years later. But the elephantine web remembers peccadillos: should young people already blighting their futures with reveal-all photos also face a criminal penalty? Melanie Pe…
As New Zealand’s former Prime Minister, Helen Clark, puts her hand up for a top UN job, how does NZ’s record on human rights compare with Australia’s, where a bill of rights consultation is just starting? Sabine Elvy takes a closer look at our near-neigh…
Blasphemy should be eliminated from the 21st Century legal lexicon. The antidote to blasphemy is a flood of free speech. Australians have always put their faith in freedoms: whatever restricts freedom, restricts our nature and our nation. Read CLA’s subm…
CLA has launched a campaign to stop the Rudd Government imposting mandatoring internet filtering – censorship – on adult Australians’ access to the internet. The campaign consists of a new website – http://www.censorfree.com.au/ – and a series of eve…
Stereotyping clouds thinking over relationship violence, says CLA member Roger Anthony Smith. The Australian Government has no place funding and promoting biased campaigns that support one sex while stigmatising the other – that’s against basic human ri…
Considerable CLA effort, along with that of experienced and astute lawyers, has produced much-improved sexual and violent offences legislation in the ACT. The CLA-inspired changes better define violence, allow the media to cover cases, and make videoing…
Proposed new Sexual and Violent Offences law will not work, and will cause a procedural breakdown in the courts, says experienced barrister Ken Archer. Two other barristers are also highly critical, while Canberra Times Editor-at-Large Jack Waterford say…
The future directions for laws and legal matters in Australia is determined in three meetings a year of the Standing Committee of Attorneys-General (SCAG), which also includes New Zealand.
The July 2008 meeting covered a range of important matters, incl…
When an Indigenous girl is gang-raped, sometimes the justice system goes on trial. But what of our society and ourselves, by inattention permitting a festering inequity that breeds an inevitability of trouble. Peter Applegarth SC of Queensland Council fo…
