http://www.thepunch.com.au/author-bios/greg-barns/ Greg is a criminal barrister and a Director of the Australian Lawyers Alliance en Copyright 2012 The Punch penberthyd@newsltd.com.au penberthyd@newsltd.com.au Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 Sat, 26 May 2012 20:00:40 +0000 Politics, opinion, world news, sports news, latest news, views, Barack Obama, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Nathan Rees, Malcolm Turnbull, Peter Garrett, Barnaby Joyce, Australian, federal politics, opinion polls, election, The Punch, thepunch, punch ExpressionEngine 1.6.7 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss 15 http://www.thepunch.com.au/images/punch-logo-rss.png http://www.thepunch.com.au/ 144 70 Politics, political opinion, world news, sports news and the latest news and views updated live, daily on The Punch - Australia's best conversation. Search The Punch keywords http://www.thepunch.com.au/search/ http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Heavy-handed-lawmakers-are-the-real-agents-of-terror/ Australia’s anti-terror laws, ten years old this year, were spawned out of a political atmosphere that was emotionally charged after the horror of 9/11. The consequence of this has been to criminalise thought and speech. It has been to ensure that guilt by association becomes a useful tool for security agencies and police forces. Politicians and police force chiefs, desperately wanting to sound tough on terror, use any arrests made under these laws to make exaggerated claims about the circumstances of the arrests and to undermine the presumption of innocence. The laws’ existence is justified even today on the grounds that a terrorist threat casts a pall over Australia and therefore we need to use the criminal process to trample on ancient rights. (Greg Barns features in the documentary, The Trial, broadcast tonight at 9.30pm on SBS ONE.) feedback@thepunch.com.au (Greg Barns) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Heavy-handed-lawmakers-are-the-real-agents-of-terror/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/Heavy-handed-lawmakers-are-the-real-agents-of-terror/#item7762 Tue, 14 Feb 2012 02:40:55 +0000 Greg Barns | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/doesnt-julia-gillard-know-the-law-on-asylum-seekers/ If reports in this morning’s Australian are true - that Julia Gillard is intending to send asylum seekers back to their country of origin - then Australians should be very concerned that their Prime Minister and her government are so ignorant of international legal convention. Put bluntly, to return asylum seekers to a location where they will more than likely face death or severe injury is a gross breach of the 1951 Refugees Convention to which Australia is a signatory.  The report says: “hundreds of Afghan and Sri Lankan asylum-seekers are likely to be sent home under Julia Gillard’s tough policy agenda to deter boatpeople.”  Ms Gillard will apparently seek assurances from the governments of those countries that persons who are not judged to be asylum seekers by Australia will not be persecuted when they are sent back home.  From a diplomatic perspective, such assurances are a sick joke given the fact that Afghanistan’s Karzai government in Kabul is hopelessly corrupt and dishonest and has no control over the security of the country. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Greg Barns) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/doesnt-julia-gillard-know-the-law-on-asylum-seekers/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/doesnt-julia-gillard-know-the-law-on-asylum-seekers/#item3480 Mon, 05 Jul 2010 03:04:44 +0000 Greg Barns | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/time-we-had-an-exit-strategy-from-the-war-on-drugs/ When it comes to illicit drugs and how our society should best deal with its impact, Ken Crispin is one man to whom it is worth listening. Crispin has been practicing law since 1972, but more relevantly, he was the Director of Public Prosecutions in the ACT from 1991 to 1994 and a judge in that jurisdiction until 2007.  So this is why Crispin has made a bit of a splash over the past week by arguing that the US lead ‘War on Drugs’ which was debated and passed by Congress forty years this month, is failing our community. Crispin, in his recently published book The Quest for Justice, has dared to say what many Australian judges and magistrates think privately to be the case.  That treating illicit drug use as a criminal justice problem has not worked and will never work. feedback@thepunch.com.au (Greg Barns) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/time-we-had-an-exit-strategy-from-the-war-on-drugs/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/time-we-had-an-exit-strategy-from-the-war-on-drugs/#item3266 Tue, 08 Jun 2010 19:45:50 +0000 Greg Barns | Author bios | The Punch http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/five-years-in-jail-is-a-hell-of-a-time-and-a-fitting-sentence/ The death of 24 year old Matthew McEvoy outside a night club in Melbourne in 2008 was as a result of acts of senseless violence by two young men, Andriyas Tello and Lauren Sako. But as tragic as Matthew McEvoy’s death is, it is important to remember that the justice system in a democratic society is not there as a tool of revenge or bloodlust, but exists rather as a means of both protecting society and hoping that these young men do not offend in this serious way again. David Penberthy on this site last Thursday took issue with Victorian Supreme Court Justice Paul Coghlan’s sentencing of Tello, who pleaded guilty to manslaughter, to a period of 5 years imprisonment (Sako has already been sent to jail for 6 years with a 3 year minimum term). feedback@thepunch.com.au (Greg Barns) Article http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/five-years-in-jail-is-a-hell-of-a-time-and-a-fitting-sentence/#comments http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/five-years-in-jail-is-a-hell-of-a-time-and-a-fitting-sentence/#item3190 Sun, 30 May 2010 19:45:55 +0000 Greg Barns | Author bios | The Punch