With a new Australian government attending to federal justice issues (ICAC with teeth, voice for Indigenous people, ending false court actions and – we expect – a Human Rights Act later on), it’s time States and Territories acted positively to end injustice in their jurisdictions: legal errors caused by incompetent and/or malicious police and prosecutors, inhumane juvenile jailing, adult prisons with temperatures likely to exceed 50C but no air-con system…and the fact that most Crimes Acts in Australia date, unreviewed across the board, from 110 years ago. It’s time for a major inquiry or commission into Australian ‘justice’ and whether our 2020 systems serve Australians as well as they should, CLA says. Plus, in this issue:
- Sue Neill-Fraser to get at least 30 minutes in the High Court this month
- AG Mark Dreyfus has a full plate…but even more needs his attention
- Political parties need reform, voice from the past says
- High Court’s till pays for some odd fingers
- Pill testing in Oz, at last
- Age of criminal responsibility should rise now
- ‘Legal’ grants: dogs’ breakfast describes how funds are scattered
- UK SAS soldiers accused of murders in Afghanistan
- ’They just seemed to fit the evidence around me’: how wrongful convictions happen
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