TPP ministers gather: protest planned
Pressure mounts on TPP negotiators to finalise a pact before November’s US elections. But many countries are far from happy with aspects of the secret agreement, reports say.
The TPP: what it means for you
Australia will have only 20 days to decide whether to sign the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement. Read some of these key articles: tell your MP what you think.
US gobbles up privacy over tax, banking
It’s not only spook surveillance by the USA that threatens our privacy: American domestic law is impinging on Australians’ rights to keep our tax and banking matters private.
Secretive trade pact killing democracy
A hush-hush trade agreement, being negotiated by 12 governments behind closed doors, is possibly the greatest current threat to the civil liberties of all Australians, Pauline Westwood writes
No secret, compelling need for inquiry
The raid on a lawyer’s office of dubious legality was personally authorised by Australia’s First Law Officer, George Brandis. Has he broken the law, Chris Michaelsen asks?
LexisNexis and CLA promote rule of law
Well-meaning politicians are reverting to ‘arbitrary control by government’, which is the reverse of the ‘rule of law’, CLA’s CEO Bill Rowlings writes in a new publication, by LexisNexis, discussing the Rule of Law in the Pacific. The publication also c…
Vaccination: the choice made for others
People frequently ask Civil Liberties Australia about the rights/wrongs of vaccination. This statement/article sets out our formal stance, and explains why and how far we support proven immunisation campaigns, as well as withdrawal of children from pre-…
Frankly, the USA has got your number
An Act of Congress purports to permit the USA spookdom to spy on all the world’s communications transiting any American junction box. Loosely defined, that’s virtually every byte of data – phone, voice, document, video, photo, music, etc – on earth. As…
We may have more rights, CJ French hints
Should the High Court place more emphasis on the rights that Australians ‘absorb’ because we have ratified international conventions. Chief Justice Robert French seems to be throwing out a strong hint in a speech he gave at the opening of the Brisbane l…
Khadr: US changes rules of war
A US show trial has finally resulted in the citizen Canada abandoned, Omar Khadr, pleading guilty to a ‘war crime’ that wasn’t when he was kidnapped by the USA as just a child of 15. Now 24, he will stay jailed a few years more in a case similar to that…