Everywhere you look, liberties and rights are coming under attack from a government hell-bent on infringing personal freedoms and curtailing how the rule of law operates in Australia.
Changes to legislation envisaged in the next four months would significantly alter the fabric of Australian society if all the proposed laws pass as drafted by Ministers and departments. The battle is to convince enough MPs – from all parties – to realise the extent of the possible damage to Australia’s notion of a fair go if draconian and punitive legislation is just waived through.
The major issues involve citizenship, free trade agreements (including the question of national sovereignty in the face of Investor State Dispute Settlement tribunals over-ruling the High Court), as well as intellectual property and copyright matters…but there are many other areas also under attack, including environmentalism.
Also in this issue…
• DPP offices, structure, decisions come under scrutiny
• Labor moves to ginger up the Intelligence and Security committee
• Hairy-bummed BooFheads get their behinds protected
• Governments pool CCTV images to track us by facial recognition
• Imagine it’s you: world Wrongful Conviction Day is 2 October
• Woman wrongly jailed for 10 years receives $2m-plus compensation
• Sloppy cops forced to pay out $1.85m to young people wrongly arrested
• First Saudi women sign on to vote
• US spies commercially on Japan, shares secrets with Australia
• Animals have no legal rights, rules judge
• Fiji supremo cracks down on opponents
• Death penalty is cruel, unusual punishment, says court