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.
What are the drivers behind the Covid-a9 vaccinations, its priority delivery, the seeking of herd immunity…and whether the vaccine must be made mandatory? In a special cooperative project, CLA and its expert members helped a team of students work through the dilemmas to produce a thought-provoking paper.
The recommendations of Victoria’s Royal Commission into the Mental Health System provide a positive way forward, says Reg Murray, who lived through the old, antiquated thinking of yesterday’s laws. He welcomes Premier Daniel Andrews’ promise to implement all the 65 of the changes proposed.
Police investigating police misconduct – and producing no case to answer, or a whitewash – is common throughout Australis. Paul Gregoire tells of some recent cases, and CLA provides some better ways of handling complaints against police generally.
Sudden, dramatic apologies by the Tasmanian Premier and Police Commissioner over investigative and management failures by Tasmanian Police since 2009 have added a possible late-breaking, new dimension to the appeal by Sue Neill-Fraser against her murder conviction, which begins in Hobart on Monday 1 March 2021. The apologies bring back to public notice a 60-page critique of alleged police failures in the SNF investigation: it was submitted to a coroner’s court in 2014, but its contents have never seen the light of day. The appeal court could be better informed if it demands to examine the dossier.
All Australian jurisdictions have agreed, after years of research and national discussions, to raise the Age of Criminal Responsibility for children from 10, but have failed to act together on an agreement reached in 2020. The ACT has decided the issue is so important that it will go it alone by the end of 2021, showing a lead to the other states and the NT, and will raise the age from 10 to 14.
The Institue of Public Affairs – Australia’s prime agency of the right – has an income of about $7m a year. including $4m in donations from the big end of town. It spent in 2020 just under $7m in pushing it point of view. And did so successfully, as former employees of the IPA now dot the federal parliamentary landscape, taking up influential positions.
Despite having a delay of 18 months for judicial/legal and Covid reasons during which to prepare, Tasmania’s Court of Criminal Appeal refuses to live-stream the Sue Neill-Fraser case starting 1 March 2021, Although there is intense interest Australia-wide, only 18 people can sit in the public gallery, 17 can watch CCTV coverage from the next door courtroom, and eight media are to be corralled in another separate CCTV room. The court claims a reason for no live-streaming is that it might order a retrial, a final decision that is actually beyond the power of the court to make. Neill-Fraser is appealing a murder conviction from 2009, which CLA believes was a miscarriage of justice.
LATE NEWS: Robert Richter QC of Melbourne has replaced Tom Percy QC of Perth as SNF’s barrister, due to Covid-19.
Just as chief judge Alan Blow makes a public PR bid for retaining his ’talented’ judges unchanged for a total of 20 years-plus – 6 men and 1 women, it should be noted – one of them (and not the woman) gets caught on camera late at night in the Grand Poobah nightcoub in an “intimate kiss” with a junior employee who reports to him. No wonder CLA and the Tasmanian Women Lawyers are calling for a judicial commission in Tasmania, urgently.
