Editor, The Age: Sir, The claim by Indigenous leaders that the Emissions Trading Scheme legislation before parliament bypasses their communities, which have been practicing environmental-friendly land management on millions of hectares over thousands of…
In South Australia, with an election close, both Labor and Liberal politicians play the ‘law and order’ card constantly in the media. But in doing so, the Chair of the SA Council for Civil Liberties warns, they are being both unfair and unwise, partic…
The despicable way the nation imprisons Indigenous Australians is atrocious…and getting worse. Governments refuse to meet their responsibilities to tackle the issue. Trend figures, provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, show the situation is…
News coverage of America’s Taxpayer March on DC, 12 September 2009, shows hundreds of signs with words now given new meanings: communist, socialist, fascist, Nazi. Equating the current American administration with any of these demonstrates ignorance, or…
The Editor, The Age, Sir: In considering the crucial matter of self-determination and self-help in Aboriginal communities, it is important that we proceed from an understanding that a major cause of the present-day plight of the first Australians is the…
Australia’s northern cattle industry prospered on the backs of Indigenous men and women who worked as slaves, lived in humpies, and went unpaid and uncared for by their bosses and the federal government supposedly protecting them. Now, like dudded worker…
What good are laws that people can’t understand, or ‘consultation’ that is more style than substance? Why do bureaucrats thousands of kilometres from reality think they know best? A lawyer by trade and a conservationist by nature, analyses t…
The Editor, The Age: While we are becoming more attentive to the life-threatening issues of global warming, refugees fleeing from war-devastated countries and absolute poverty affecting tens of millions of people, we must not ignore the plight of indige…
Former WA Governor, and ex-Chief of the Army, Lieutenant General John Sanderson, is calling for urgent action to address an Indigenous imprisonment rate that he describes as ‘an affront to the humaity of us all’. His words back CLA’s Australia Day call f…
In 1975 I successfully campaigned for improvements in conditions for prisoners, primarily remand prisoners. This included the right to vote, their right to make phone calls to their lawyers, legal aid and immediate family.Also included was the right to…