Latest CLArion
November 2018: Aged Care RC must consider liberties/rights of elderly; Dutton makes surreptitious move towards national ID scheme
Aged care is the next national disgrace to get its time in the Royal Commission witness box, over the next 18 months: CLA is calling for members to tell us what freedoms needs assuring. Citizens are likely to forego traditional identity protection as Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton holds a ‘quick ’n dirty’ sham consultation to fulfil a push for open-slather exchange of personal data among spooks and government departments. The ex-Queensland cop pushed for widespread file sharing when he first entered parliament 16 years ago. Meanwhile, in health, defence, election funding and at the Australian War Memorial, forgetfulness or worse reigns when probity should be the minimum bottom line.
Also in this issue:
- Can a machine make a legal decision? The ATO thinks it can
- Groupthink rules, ex-DPP claims…and the chief judge says ‘That’s good!’
- Prisoner does quarter of a century in jail for an 18-month offence
- ID scanning in clubs? How well does it reveal villains?
- DPPs make a profit for the Crown: more staff, assets
- TI child-raising to be enshrined in law
- Beware NZ, where your password must be revealed
- Straights get equal rites
Recent CLArions
- October 2018: MPs move to safeguard genes data from insurance companies; ABC management fail, but journos spark another Royal Commission
There’s a welcome push in federal parliament to rein in insurance companies through a moratorium on citizens’ having to disclose the results of genes testing. The move would safeguard rights under insurance and superannuation policies, which affect nearly every Australian. ...
- September 2018: Major intelligence review likely to beef up security, surveillance
Emerging from a political schemozzle, real government business continues with a major review of the ‘National Intelligence Community’ scheduled for early 2019. Your input is sought for a November 2018 CLA submission. The government claims the review is NOT about ...
- August 2018: Future of rights and liberties under scrutiny
Debates about liberties and rights are back on the public agenda as the Australian Human Rights Commission launches a new study into how emerging IT is affecting us. The prospects are improving that Queensland will become the third jurisdiction (after ...
- July 2018: Nauru has become Australia’s devil’s island
Nauru is the never-ending nightmare for children and their parents who sought asylum in Australia in the hope of a better life. Now they are imprisoned by an ocean, with no prospect of leaving unless they take a government bribe ...
- June 2018: Spook special: how wrong choices skew political monitoring
The Big End of town receives different justice from mainstream punters. Similarly, Australia’s spooks enjoy the lightest of parliamentary supervision because a key committee is dominated by MPs whose actions, and a recent speech, clearly demonstrate they are part of ...
- May 2018: New campaign for parliament to vote when Australian forces get involved in conflicts
CLA is planning to launch a new campaign to convince the Australian Parliament to pass legislation so that a Prime Minister has to seek parliamentary approval on sending Australians troops into war or a warlike situation.
The campaign will have ... - CLArion April 2018: Religious freedom inquiry delayed, new CLA initiatives
Parliament committees inquiring into religious freedom in Australia as well as electoral funding and mandated disclosure by NGOs have been inundated with submissions, forcing them to report late. This issue also shows off CLA’s new T-shirt, reminds members about our ...
- March 2018 newsletter: FOI, privacy in turmoil as boss resigns out of the blue
The boss of privacy, data breach monitoring and FOI has resigned out of the blue, just as the government introduces a new regime supposedly to curtail leaking by the corporate sector of private, personal data. At the same time, the ...
- Feb 2018 newsletter: Aged care inquiry is priority; danger lurks in police state laws
A federal parliament committee’s inquiry peeling back secrecy around aged care practices will dominate early 2018. There’s also grave danger in the ‘creeping Stalinism’ of proposed anti-whistleblower laws. 31 Jan 2018
- Jan 2018 newsletter: OPCAT to help change attitudes as liberties decline CLA celebrates one success as OPCAT is ratified, opening up jails and detention centres to inspection, but much work remains to expose aged care issues and combat declining liberties. 31 Dec 2017
- Dec 2017 newsletter: Prioritising needed for range of issues to be tackled in 2018
Aged care rights and freedoms of sportspeople and in sport are two issues that need greater attention in 2018…but what other matters should be prioritised, do you think? 30 Nov 2017
- Nov 2017 newsletter: CLA calls for total overhaul in ‘Rebirth of the Nation’
The citizenship-politician crisis is warning and opportunity that it’s time for a complete overhaul of Australia’s Constitution, two centuries after its drafting. We need a new ‘founding deed’. 31 Oct 2017
- Oct 2017 CLArion: Govt living in fear is newly afraid of fictitious bodies threat The government, fresh from ringing itself in a steel-fenced citadel, has announced proposed new legal protection to stop fictitious bodies taking over control of the nation.
- Sep 2017 CLArion: Bid for a Bill of Rights to help counter creeping control by ASIS and spooks
Independent MHR Andrew Wilkie launches a new bid for a national Bill of Rights in Parliament, even as ASIS and other spooks demonstrate increasing control over ordinary Australians. 31 Aug 2017
- Immigration: policy bias treats arrivals differently depending on transport
There’s one rule for boat arrivals, another for air arrivals: why do we discriminate, and why does Minister Dutton allow freeloaders to overstay in Australia for decades? 31 July 2017
- Miscarriages and genes research likely to spark campaigns for major change CLA initiatives to tabulate wrongful convictions in Australia, and to research genes privacy and ownership protection, are likely to result in major, long-term freedom and rights campaigns. 30 June 2017
- Indigenous leaders show way as calls for change ripple through impatient society
Indigenous leaders are helping to drive a groundswell for fundamental, meaningful change rippling through society, with calls for an Australian republic now added to the request for ‘real’ representation. 31 May 2017
- As tension increases, Parliament must be empowered to decide if we go into wars As US-North Korea brinksmanship escalates, it becomes more obvious than ever that the Australian Parliament should decide on our going into warlike situations, not the Kitchen Cabinet. 30 April 2107
- Mar 2017 CLArion: Ratifying convention would open jails to external inspection
AG Brandis has promised to ratify the torture convention, thus opening up detention centres to inspection, by the end of the year. CLA fervently hopes he keeps his promise. 28 Feb 2017
- Feb 2017 CLArion: Justice-legal ‘industry’ needs national structural reform inquiry CLA has called on PM Turnbull and AG Brandis to launch a robust, thorough national inquiry into all aspects of the justice-legal sector, which urgently needs to modernise. 31 Jan 2017
- Jan 2017 CLArion: Age, genes, drugs and terrorism likely to dominate this year
The above issues, plus the shape of our own democracy, will come to the fore in 2017, as impetus grows for changes under CLA’s 10-year campaign for Better Justice. 31 Jan 2017