CLA’s policy on criminal justice
All Australians are entitled to protection from arbitrary arrest and unnecessary detention; to a fair, speedy and public trial; to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, and to legal advice and representation.
Sentencing should be based on the principle of rehabilitation wherever possible.
Admiral Patrick M. Walsh, the vice chief of naval operations, told President Obama on 20 February that conditions at the Guantanamo base met the standards of the Geneva Conventions. For an alternative reality, read this indictment of appalling conditions…
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…
Cartoonist Michael Atchison OAM died in February 2009 – CLA salutes his contribution to the community, including the four cartoons he generously donated to the CLA touring exhibition, ‘Laughing With Knives’. During 40 years at the Adelaide Advertiser, A…
The four Australians anointed to hear Australians’ views about what our civil liberties and human rights should be have begun their criss-cross-country tour. The first gathering started off too low a base, without acknowledging the extensive rights we al…
A United Nations committee is adjudicating on a claim by 20 Indigenous Australians that the federal government’s intervention in the Northern Territory is racist. What will the Australian Government do when the UN finds the claim proven…as it most like…
The auditor hints at significant reservations about the appropriateness of the ACT Policing annual report, and on how expenditure of about $122m is accounted for. As well, the report contains some hard-to-reconcile figures. The ACT Legislative Assembly n…
A special relationship is likely between the Obama Administration and Indonesia, where the new President spent four formative years. But new ties must surmount lingering human rights abuse issues, particularly by elements of the military, in the recent a…
Secret surveillance continues apace around Australia, according to a document submitted to parliament. But it achieves convictions in only 3% of cases…and there seems to be about 180 surveillance devices left behind, lost or missing-(still)-in-action.…
Are western ‘democracies’ becoming Big Brother surveillance societies? The House of Lords has produced a major study of the issue, with lessons for Australia: here’s an expert precis of it by Dr David Murakami Wood, as well as reference to the full re…
The new national consultation, under way from February 2009, calls for examining where rights come from, and and what they mean to Australians. Here James Dunn discusses how rights in Australia haven’t had a fair go, even though we were instrumental in g…