Category: Health Access

Forensics in Australia roiled by ‘outsider’ criticisms

Forensic science throughout Australia has caused massive miscarriages of justice. There’s Mallard in WA, Farah Jama in Victoria, Gordon Wood and claimed spearchucking a body at The Gap in NSW, Lindy Chamberlain, the Dingo and sound-deadening material in the NT…and, CLA believes, the Sue Neill-Fraser ‘Yacht No Body’ case in Tasmania. But still forensic scientists appear to be super-resistant to critiques of their opinions aimed at improving legal certainty. Here’s a report of an ongoing dispute, being played out in the global scientific media…at the instigation of an Australian polymath stargazer whose base is the foot of a telescope in the Canary Islands, south-west of Casablanca.

Call for WA govt to rein in integrity-lacking police 

The untrustworthy WA Police have done it again, ignored clear ‘community rules’ and played smart-alecs to abuse data privacy and potentially blow up trust in the system of Covid-19 venue tracing to save lives and prevent pandemic spread. It’s time the government realised WAPOL must be reined in, and that Police-Investigating-Police (PIP) must stop

CLA posts Australia Day letters for 2021

To Kevin Andrews MHR:
Civil Liberties Australia on Australia Day 2021 asks the man responsible for citizens of the ACT and the NT having lesser rights than all others Australians – they are not able to even vote on dying with dignity/euthansia law – to ‘rescind’ the federal law he promoted by lodging a new Private Member’s Bill to restore the rights of 600,000 fellow Australians. Here’s the Andrews letter.

To WA Police Commissioner (and Police Minister):
On Australia Day 2021, CLA asks for an apology from WAPOL and the State for those people the police falsely and irresponsibly named as ‘persons-of-interest’ before, some 25 years later, Bradley Edwards was convicted and sentenced. We asked particularly for an apology of Peter Weygers and civil liberties: Weygers was then the local president, whose reputation was ruined by the erroneous police accusation. Click here for the letter.

To Ministers for Corrective Services, throughout Australia:
CLA asks, on Australia Day 2021, that you review the rules, sometimes archaic, about what prisoners can receive through the mail and other associated censorship concerns, including their rights to educational material and to private correspondence with the lawyers. For the letter sent to WA click here. And for a CLA/Uni of Qld report on the state of censorship in prisons in Australia, click here.