Read about the new national campaign, co-led by CLA and involving MPs, researchers and scientists, to take back our rights over human genes from big companies who claim patent control over the very essence of our being. Also, be alerted to two major new parliamentary inquiries which put personal privacy at greater risk in Australia, and threaten increased monitoring and surveillance by the state (police, commissions and secret security agencies).
The trend towards mushrooming state control over individual freedoms is so alarming in Australia that the new Rights Commission president, a long-serving Treaties committee chair, and legal academics are alerting the nation to the worrying direction governments have taken Australia over the past decade, and the increasing dangers to our civil liberties unless more of us start to speak up for what’s right.
Other items in this issue include:
- Prisons are being used to hide the mentally ill
- China to abolish death penalty, CLA questioning reveals
- Lawyer fined for handing of case (12 years wrongful jailing)
- Speakers! More trouble as Qld version negates free speech
- Hicks was tortured, government lawyers effectively admit
- UN says world crime costs $890 billion a year
- Malaysia to repeal its sedition act
- Robin Hood tweeter wins appeal
- Scotts add gaiety to marriage
- US Marines train to be cops…perhaps over here?