Category: CLArion

CLArion Aug ’23: Criminal cases body comes closer

Positive action towards a national Criminal Cases Review Commission is coming closer: Australia’s AGs are expected to formally consider the concept, which works well against wrongful convictions in several other countries, for the first time at their September meeting. Meanwhile, submissions over the issue of a Human Rights Act for Australia have now been lodged, and that of CLA’s has evinced extensive praise for its comprehensiveness and its promotion of a ’No Rights Without Remedy’ approach, shortly to start being introduced in the ACT. And a positive spin-off from the Robodebt fiasco might be that secrecy is lifted around Cabinet documents that don’t deserve to be hidden.

CLArion July ’23: Human Rights subs close 1 July…please get yours in

Today, 1 July 2023, is the deadline for lodging a submission to achieve a federal Human Rights Act in Australia. Please email your thoughts on a HRA today even if it’s only one or two pages (see where to email on Page 1). IN THIS ISSUE we name the nation’s worst police force as judged by the people of Australia, and warn police authorities about hiring duds from elsewhere as they desperately seek new recruits while trying to hide police misbehaviour from citizens. We remind AG Mark Dreyfus it’s time to drop the charges against whistleblowers Boyle and McBride.

CLArion June ’23: Human Rights sub close at end of June; AAT re-forming

30 June is the last day to prepare a submission on a proposed federal Human Rights law. Please get your supportive sub in, even if only a letter, or a short comment. Meanwhile, AG Mark Dreyfus is reforming the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, appointing a new head and planning new appointments, based on merit. The ACT is raising the Minimum Age of Responsibility for Children to 14, and will join SA, Tasmania, Victoria and WA with a legislated second and subsequent ‘Right To Appeal’ where there’s a substantial miscarriage of justice.

CLArion May 2023: time to make Human Rights Act submision

More details are emerging on how public consultation over a Human Rights Act for Australia will get under way: you can express your support in a submission to the parliamentary committee by 1 July 2023, so please do, even if it is just a one-page letter. Meanwhile, secret trials, indefinite detenton, vague laws, forensics problems and more Indigenous people being jailed are among the concerns in this issue, not to mention a swathe of government departments and agencies failing to act, acting inappropriately of refusing to meet mandatory deadlines for providing public information to the people they supposedly serve.

CLArion April 2023: Human Rights Act in place in 2024?

The Australian Parliament wants to know whether Australia should have a Human Rights Act (HRA)…which could be enacted by December 2024. The Committee on Human Rights invites submissions until 1 July 2023, then will hold hearings until December 2023, reporting to the Parliament by 31 March 2024. That would leave nine months for the Albanese government to legislate a federal HRA for Australia in 2024, before the next national election, likely in early 2025. CLA has been one of the most active campaigners for a HRA over the past three years and, with other activists and supporters, is celebrating interim success. Some 73% of Australians support Australia having a HRA: just 3% oppose one.

CLArion March 2023: Voice and Rights timetable clarifies

The Voice campaign for a special Indigenous path to parliamentary debate launched in February. The first official call for a federal Human Rights Act is expected when the Australian Human Rights Commission tables its ‘Free & Equal’ report, four years in the making, in the first week of this month.  Meanwhile liberties and rights, particularly of children, are under increasing threat from a combination of vigilante social media activist campaigns and state governments and oppositions ramping up ‘order and law’ issues ahead of elections.