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…
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…
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…
Australia’s own charter would create a greater community awareness of responsibilities as well as rights, James Dunn says. ‘The humanitarian consequences of the economic crisis will test the extent to which the basic rights of our citizens are really bei…
Civil Liberties Australia each year selects 2-4 topics for Australia Day, drawing the attention of people in positions of power to opportunities for change and improvement in Australian society, or to problems that need fixing. The 2009 letters cover: Es…
As Australian Parliamentarians are about to legislate for a new three-person panel to review our terrorism laws, they could do no better than contemplate an American case where the US Patriot Act delivered ‘justice’ gone mad.The case also highli…
I have observed with interest since the Corruption and Crime Commission of WA has been in operation that it has brought down adverse findings against many people. On the face of it, it seems generally that’s where its authority stops. There seems to…
CLA has motivated the Privacy Commissioner, a national statutory office holder, to investigate how young people’s privacy is almost certainly being abused by nightclub owners, who photograph, fingerprint and data log patrons before allowing them in. Read…
Is WA’s Corruption and Crime Commission protecting individuals against excesses by the Executive arm of government? Or is the CCC a major sinew of that arm, party to excess as it ‘fingers’ possibly innnocent people? Barrister and former WA Premier, Peter…