Category: CLArion

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 the ACT and Victoria) to have a ‘rights and responsibilities’ act. However, hope in one area is squelched by the federal government’s intransigence when it puts the wrong people on trial over bugging the Timor Leste Cabinet room. As governments continue try to bury their mistakes, legally or otherwise, there’s more need than ever for the statutory requirements of the Model Litigant Principles to apply.

Also in this issue:

  • New troop call out bill is alarming
  • ‘No one else will do it for us’
  • Targets for females…but not for MLPs
  • ‘Brown paper bag’ opened for by-election pork barrelling
  • Do parliamentary committees enhance our rights?
  • Canadians troubled by detention of immigrants
  • 200 women prosecuted for false rape claims
  • Girl raped by brother jailed for having abortion

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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 to go back into the state of persecution they fled. Even the youngest of children face a life sentence without hope, with papers stamped ‘Never to come to Australia…no matter what’. As Australia demonstrates its inhumanity to the outside world, internally more and more commentators are warning that we are turning into a police state. Civil liberties people have been sounding the alarm for more than a decade, but now an eminent judge and a close observer of the Australian Parliament are speaking out too.

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 the intelligence elite, instead of being disassociated, separate monitors for the community. With security agencies and police gaining ever more intrusive Identity, surveillance and detention powers, the unbalanced holding of such secret forces to account is a worry for civil liberties, rights and freedoms across Australia.

Also, read about how the Home Affairs Department, under Minister Peter Dutton, wants to introduce a facial recognition system to Australia like those with a 90%-plus failure rate in the UK. Other items include:

  • Budget snippets with liberties implications that you may have missed
  • Security beefed up to fight yesterday’s battle
  • Why Australia needs a War Powers Act
  • Honest, diligent cop compensated after 50 years
  • Jailed youth are overwhelmingly ill, not evil
  • Should we hold a ‘Dutton for a Day’ day?
  • Chinese manipulate brainwaves to boost production

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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 a focus each year on Anzac Day, Australia’s day of remembering the fallen. While other jingoistic celebrations focus on militarism each 25 April, the War Powers campaign will highlight the opposite – ensuring Australia thinks long and hard before getting into new wars. Other items include:

  • ‘Autocratic populism’ replacing democracy
  • If NZ can avoid ISDS, so should Australia
  • Public servants win free speech rights back
  • Drug law reform: special articles
  • Mentally ill people forced into prison
  • No data is safe from government list-building
  • Trying to vote results in five years jail

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 new website, and reports on the 2018 AGM and selected member comments.

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 head of Australia’s police and security services, Minister Peter Dutton, has launched an overt, public attack on magistrates and the judiciary.

Other items in this issue include:

  • TPP-11 just as flawed as the original: sovereignty at risk
  • Have ASIO ‘blobs’ been given illegal access to Parliament House?
  • DPP’s office profits from proceeds of crime: more staff, more funding
  • First system of detention centre inspections under OPCAT is set up
  • Teenagers to get lesser rights…and women already suffer discrimination
  • State election is a high-stakes choice regarding human rights
  • Nation’s justice system is in turmoil, says its former head
  • Rulers crack down on lawyers’ rights, licences cancelled

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