Law

Governments keep secrets sometimes. We all accept that. But you might be surprised to discover just how ingrained – ridiculously so, in some cases – the concept of secrecy is in Australia’s federal laws.

Illustration: Michael Atchison, The Advertiser / File

Disclosing classified security information to a foreign spy is an imprisonable offence.

But so is the unauthorised disclosure of subsidies paid to Australian dairy producers. Or details of the operation of the dental benefits scheme.

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  • Davido says:

    07:24pm | 16/03/10

    Totally agree. Secrecy and more recently privacy provisions have completely been abused by governments. Not to mention the commercial in confidence abuses to protect corrupt tendering processes. Read more »

  • Matt says:

    04:43pm | 16/03/10

    Because they are spending our money. Read more »

 

How much do we really care about whales? How much are the Australian people and its Government really willing to put on the line in our relationship with Japan to stop the killing of our sonar speaking cousins?

A mother whale and her calf being pulled onto a Japanese boat

Tony Abbott has gone some way to answering this question by saying he doesn’t think it’s worth taking Japan to the International Court of Justice or International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea. In Abbott’s summation it’s just not worth pissing off the Japanese and risking a legal fall-out with our number one trade partner.

“We don’t like whaling. We would like the Japanese to stop,” he told Macquarie Radio yesterday. “On the other hand, we don’t want to needlessly antagonise our most important trading partner, a fellow democracy, an ally.”

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  • James says:

    04:55pm | 21/01/10

    The real issue is that the Japanese are defying the IWC with bollocks about whaling for scientific reasons (in a whale sanctuary), I really don’t care whether they say it won’t lead to the extinction of the Minke whale, they shouldn’t be there in the first place.  It is now… Read more »

  • B S Goh says:

    10:58am | 21/01/10

    Thanks James. As I have said we ALL in fact share the common objective to SAVE each and everyone of the whale species. We differ on to achieve this common objective. The bigger and more important issue for us as a Nation from this whaling controversy is how the Government… Read more »

 

What really defines these three aspects of our society: Its race or colour? Peace or violence? Street crime or racial crime?

Nitin Garg's mourning family in India

You might have thought that race, peace and street crime are more commonly seen in our society. People generally do. But take a second to think about your answers. 

To my mind, every person who lives in Australia should be given a ‘fair go’, an ideal that many Australians aim to hold. Australia was built by immigrants, and the influence of immigrants stretches broadly throughout society.

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  • Bill says:

    11:16am | 17/01/10

    Interesting to see ten Australians listed as being killed in India.  Let’s hope we see the same Punch ‘outrage’ shown about Indians being killed here.  I also want to hear from Amit, but I bet we won’t. Read more »

  • LuckyLady says:

    03:02pm | 11/01/10

    This article is sickening. The Punch must be desperate for journalists to publish this. The reality is, we don’t know who has committed these crimes. It may be other Indian students for all we know. I come from New South Wales and the people here are very tolerant of all… Read more »

 

* Warning - this post contains offensive language (actually, it depends a bit on your definition of “offensive”).

Don't end up in here by shooting your @$&^*# mouth off

F***, f***, f***, f***, f*** and f*** it again. I have just agreed to write a 500 word article over the weekend. What a f****** pain in the arse. I should have said I was too f***** busy and they should get some other stupid f*** to do it.

Gosh, I hope I haven’t offended anyone. Have I used any offensive language? So what is offensive language anyway? You could go to any pub in Sydney and hear language much worse than I’ve used.

But you better not speak like that in front of a police man or woman. Especially if you are being difficult anyway and they are looking for some way to get you under their control.

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  • Carl Palmer says:

    03:48pm | 05/01/10

    Interesting – it is ok to say these words but not ok to write them. If anyone did reply using the actual word then the moderator should have published them because Phillip-Gibson classifies them just as “naughty words”. Nothing posted thus far so I can only assume that they are… Read more »

  • Classic says:

    09:39am | 05/01/10

    New Age and Criminologist,  neither you nor I (nor anyone for that matter) should open their mouths without complete, undisputed “facts” at their disposal - the coward’s refuge when their opinion is indefensible.  Noone should read a newspaper or any other literature to form an opinion without having every possible… Read more »

 

SHY Keenan (corr) doesn’t like to call herself a victim nor does she like the term survivor. Both imply a resolution to an issue.

Australia is copping out on child protection, says Shy Keenan.

But from the age of four she was systematically raped, beaten, degraded, filmed then, at the age of 10, sold to a gang of dockworkers in the UK for four more years of abuse.

In 2000 more than 25 years after the abuse, she armed herself with a small camera lent by the BBC and filmed one of her attackers boasting about his actions. Two years later she watched in satisfaction from the back of Liverpool Crown Court as three of her attackers, including a stepfather, were handed jail terms.

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  • Tim says:

    03:50pm | 24/01/10

    Murder IS less of a crime than abuse - having been in that position, now 40 years on, with professional help, i am STILL trying to get some enjoyment or satisfaction or any pleasure at all from life. I am left with a strong feeling that life is a sentence… Read more »

  • Vicki PS says:

    08:21am | 10/12/09

    @Jolanda:  I said paedophilia can’t be changed, but did not say this was “the biggest problem”.  I also said that situational, opportunistic abuse by offenders who weren’t paedophiles within the clinical definition, was amenable to treatment [whereas paedophilia is not]. I did NOT say that abuse by family members and… Read more »

 

The ability of Prime Minister Rudd and his Government to “talk tough” has never been in question.  It’s the one thing Labor actually do well.

Behind this graffiti lurks the soul of a tortured artist.

Remember that first heady year in office when they declared a war on virtually everything – from childhood obesity and whaling, to banker’s salaries, unemployment and even the global financial crisis itself?
Conveniently, the rhetoric has never had to bear resemblance to reality. 

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  • Bruce says:

    12:08am | 14/11/09

    Unfortunately, Kevin Rudd and the Labor party is like a “gummy tiger”. Lotsa growl but no teeth. Read more »

  • Jasper says:

    09:23pm | 13/11/09

    Steve, the zero tolerance experiment in New York, often brought forward as the epitome of the policy, also intersected with a demographic shift brought about by the legalisation of abortion in the US. The full details of the argument are in a book called Freakanomics but the potted version is… Read more »

 

Did I read the story correctly? Now police can’t even fine a person for drunken behaviour in public places? Time to get serious with the idiots who drink to excess, befoul public spaces, wreck the ‘quiet enjoyment’ of others, and divert our accident and emergency teams…

You're nicked: police move in at a wild party in Sydney's west last Saturday.

Here’s the basic principle – if your drunkenness results in police officers, or ambulance officers, or hospital teams, having to deal with you, you pay the full cost of this intervention – call it the ‘abuser pays’ principle.

Now I’d be in favour of bringing back the charge of public drunkenness, but I suspect that the paperwork involved these days for police officers in processing someone charged with an offence deters them from doing so, and we probably don’t have the cell space available.

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  • tek says:

    08:46am | 06/11/09

    I’m 31 years old, and have been binge-drinking for, say 13 years. I love going out, and quite often I drink too much. Often I must been obnoxious, stubborn, boring and/or bad company in general. And at the time I probably thought I was being witty or insightful. I dance… Read more »

  • Josh Trevarthen says:

    04:22pm | 05/11/09

    You can pick at the leaves of a weed all you like and it’ll probably grow stronger than ever, or you can pull the sucker out from the root. It’s requires a fundamental change in our not-as-smart-as-we-think western socities, which means wide open minds in government…a laughable proposition! Alcohol is… Read more »

 

The kid’s “parents” - his “parents” are his mum and her current boyfriend - don’t give a stuff. He hates school, and teachers are relieved when he truants. He will not likely complete the school certificate.

Poor, brutish and nasty: how the break the cycle?

He’s never learnt to control his tongue, and his is the discourse of the gutter. He’s already been before the children’s court a couple of times, and is not scared by the police – in fact one of his highs is the foot chase after a bit of rock throwing.

His security and identity are found in his small group of mates. He can look forward to a life, to quote Hobbes, which is poor, brutish and nasty. Unfortunately for the tax payer, it will not be short.

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  • Elle says:

    12:11am | 29/10/09

    Great article, and great work. Chris, much of what you say is also relevant to children in care (out of home or foster care), particularly regarding the primary adult relationship they need. Same lack of investment (or misguided investment in working with the family at the expense of the individual… Read more »

  • Carl Palmer says:

    03:50pm | 28/10/09

    Chris, David Penberthy made reference to you in an article he posted on The Punch on the 23rd Oct titled “Crimewave turns our most genteel city into a moshpit” where he spoke very highly of the work you were doing and your passion to help disadvantaged kids. I believe wholeheartedly… Read more »

 

You aren’t allowed to smack your partner, so why should you be allowed to smack your child?

It also makes no sense to me to declare war on thugs in the street and yet still allow parents to hit their kids.

This is particularly the case when it’s done with a blunt wooden object rather than just a hand.

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  • Kathleen says:

    10:58am | 23/10/09

    Thank God - I’m not the only person who thinks smacking kids is hypocritical. How can you tell your kids not to hit someone if you’re doing it to them? It teaches them that knee-jerk physical reactions are an acceptable method of dealing with problems. Arguments of `kids these days… Read more »

  • Angela says:

    01:06pm | 17/10/09

    Who hasn’t broken a wooden spoon or two? Most of us grew up with ‘traditional’ parents who grew up with the cane. When you have kids you don’t get given a guide to managing child behaviour. You do what you have learnt. The key is to teach people alternative discipline… Read more »

 

With the controversy in Melbourne of a mother who was brought before police and still could be charged with assualt for using wooden spoon on her daughter, we at the Punch thought we’d share with you wooden spooning techniques used in our families. Were you subjected to the wooden spoon? Is it acceptable or based on an outdated notion or corporal punishment?

Sometimes you gotta send in the spoon squad

Growing up in family of nine children discipline was not merely an issue for parents at one point in my family we had our own militia and counter-intelligence organisation. 

I’m actually surprised that we all survived some of those punch ups that would quickly escalate into riots putting those Nigerian crime gangs to shame. 

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  • Ella says:

    07:42pm | 16/10/09

    I came from a middle to upper class family with no drug addiction issues which externally did not appear to be broken.  Despite being in a ‘good’ family my sister and I were hit with open palms, a dedicated strapping belt, wooden spoons, hair brushes or whatever was available on… Read more »

  • Tandah says:

    10:53am | 16/10/09

    Yes S, but your sister’s life would not have been half as interesting as yours. Read more »

 

A good bit of campaign journalism was launched in Melbourne yesterday by the Sunday Herald Sun in throwing open the debate on whether the drink driving limit should be dropped to .02.

.Freshen your drink governor?

The Sunday reported that 39 people had been killed in Victoria alone in accidents involving drivers under the .005 mark in just the last five years.

Victoria’s Deputy Police Commissioner has tentatively backed the debate, if not quite advocating an actual change to .02

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  • front Row says:

    08:22pm | 15/03/10

    Now listen here, Freeman. Some of you lot might think it’s a lot of fun being humorous, making jokes and the like. Well, it’s not. There’s a time and a place for everything, my lad. Front Row Read more »

  • OKay says:

    06:41pm | 15/03/10

    Sure, increase the workload for an already gutted police force. Or, worse yet, increase the size of the police force and give them unlimited search-and-seizure orders. This quirky concept must be a trial-balloon for lazy politicians. Why else would they not mention breathilyzing ignition interlocks? Lowering the limit is such… Read more »

 

Tegan Leach has become the unwitting “it” girl for abortion reform in Queensland. Unwitting, because who would have knowingly decided to sign up for the sort of exposure that has been thrust on this Cairns teenager, all because she made a choice thousands of women have made before her to abort a baby she knew she was not ready to care for.

Cairns couple Sergie Brennan and Tegan Leach (left) who have been charged with importing a drug to have an abortion

However, the charge she faces is that she allegedly did not do it through the proper channels.

Tegan is expected to sell her story exclusively to a women’s magazine when the dust has finally settled on this case and she is legally able to speak freely outside of court, for hers is a case that has opened a hornet’s nest of debate about the rights or wrongs of do-it-yourself drug-induced abortions in Australia and women’s ability to access them.

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  • Gracee says:

    11:55am | 19/10/09

    I have read what most of what you have said and I noticed that no one has mentioned what actually happens in an abortion. I’m 16 and I looked it up and it was actually quite horrible to say the least. i mean in most methods they actually pull apart… Read more »

  • Rach says:

    01:36pm | 30/09/09

    There is nothing tragic about people who are not financially stable and feel able to care for a child to abort that foetus. The tragedy lies where people are too damn selfish for there own good and many young people view children as an anchor to there relationship with a… Read more »

 

A quick flick through some of the side effects of RU-486 makes for sober reading. These range from stomach cramps, through nausea, vomiting to ectopic pregnancies and severe internal bleeding.

A shop window asking people to oppose abortion drug RU-486

Quite clearly, it is a serious drug that should be treated with some caution and strictly only under medical supervision.

If RU-486 weren’t an abortion drug there wouldn’t be any controversy. No-one would question the prosecution of two people for procuring and administering another pharmaceutical with side effects as serious as those of RU-486. But it was never about the drug. It was about access to abortion.

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  • Melissah says:

    02:03am | 01/10/09

    Nice to see that what was potentially an interesting and informative essay on abortion aids became right-wing Christian propaganda. Read more »

  • SimonH says:

    01:36am | 30/09/09

    This article is like a ‘best of’ anti-abortion talking points, furphys and Catholic dogma. If this is the best the anti-abortion lobby have got intellectually, then the pro-choicers can rest pretty easy. “We should never get to the point where we do not question the existence of abortion in our… Read more »

 

I’m trying to think of an intro that won’t make me sound like a Dirty Harry-style vigilante. But I can’t so I’ll just admit it – if serial paedophile Dennis Ferguson moved into my suburb I’d be out on the street with the rest of the neighbours demanding he be kicked out immediately, and asking why he was ever let out of jail in the first place.

Ryde resident Steve Leone (left) confronts Dennis Ferguson's spokesman Brett Collins yesterday. Picture: Cameron Richardson.

With one exception, which I’ll deal with further down, all the wise-headed counsel against mob hysteria is coming from people who haven’t just discovered that their new next-door neighbour kidnapped and raped three children.

Or that he’s been charged with other aberrant or disturbing conduct since then too. And is still quite obviously as mad as a meat axe, a genuinely scary-looking weirdo who would probably be safer and happier if he were still in custody, rather than popping up in an endless series of new locations across our continent, on every occasion confronted by parents who become frightened and angry when they realise who’s just moved in.

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  • cats says:

    10:52am | 11/02/10

    I want to know why he is the only pedophile being targeted by the lynch mob. It’s just because he looks fugly and weird, isn’t it? Everyone knows his face and who he is so theres a very small chance of him reoffending. Most pedophiles are known to the family… Read more »

  • YMC says:

    05:33am | 11/02/10

    Best place for him would be as live-in janitor in a school for the children of the politicians and social activist who support lenient sentencing. If not, house him next door to Robert Hill, the idiot Justice Minister who reckons that tougher sentencing does not deter crime, Read more »

 

It is safe to assume that Australia has the only high court in the world to have an important case of constitutional and military law decided over an incident of “teabagging.”

Teabags in a more appropriate context

Following the High Court’s decision in Lane v Morrison on the illegitimacy of the Australian Military Court, the practice of “teabagging” will be forever etched in the legal lexicon of this country.

While Big Brother’s turkeyslapping incident introduced us to genital based attempts at humour taking hold of the national agenda, turkeyslapping was only brought up in Parliament while teabagging made it all the way to the High Court - and won.

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  • Peter from Sydney says:

    09:41am | 30/08/09

    The thing was a close call. French CJ almost did not give it a run. Now they have to wake up to the hangover they have created for themselves, and move ever so slightly, to the position that any Court constituted by one Officer, appointed no matter how by a… Read more »

  • Jack Tar says:

    11:05am | 28/08/09

    I’ve been on the wrong end of the old Kangaroo Court a few times myself and know firsthand that a lot of what goes on is hardly justice in any sense of the word. 4 seperate charges where all evidence showed innocent. And yet still charged at the end of… Read more »

 

Canberra just got a whole lot more boring.

These firecrackers represent a clear and present danger to the ACT

With their Jedi Council-like wisdom, the ACT Government has banned the social evil that is fireworks from private sale and use in the capital.

While this decision kills off one of the few uniquely Canberran outlets of fun, it’s a pretty interesting ban from a Government that presides over laws that have enabled nobody to be convicted of murder in the last 11 years.

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  • Melanie says:

    02:27pm | 30/08/09

    Good point Leo and an interesting analogy, but I do think you downplay the effect fireworks have on animals! It’s a good thing that they’ve banned them, but you may be right that the legislators have their priorities scrambled in a variety of areas, and that this is partly due… Read more »

  • wald says:

    01:32am | 26/08/09

    Canberra is one of the most beautiful places in Australia (sshhh don’t tell anyone) and fireworks are invariably used by bored loons to disturb everyone at midnight. The public displays are enough for the kids. Read more »

 

The present political consensus among the major parties against permitting and recognising same sex marriages is so obviously an intellectual surrender to the religious right that one looks for a single phrase rhetorical demolition of this anti-gay pretence of a position that would show it in all of its hypocrisy.

Participants in a mass 'illegal wedding' outside the ALP Conference in Sydney earlier this month. Pic: AFP

I do not, for a moment, believe that those politicians (including speakers at the recent Labor Party National Conference) who go on about protecting the “sanctity of marriage” believe the nonsense they espouse. I also fail to believe that they believe that a majority of the Australian people support the continued refusal to recognise single sex marriages.

I believe that the political imperative is to avoid the anger of that noisy minority, the religious right, which, itself, is hardly representative of most people of a religious persuasion in Australia. The political imperative also concerns the possible swing vote of the Family First in the Senate.

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  • alan says:

    07:59am | 26/08/09

    I’m not gay, but I’m willing to learn! Apparently 0.2 per cent of children born in Australia are hermaphrodite.  I suggest it’s wrong to discriminate against them.  They are human and still have rights regardless of how homophobic the rest of us might be. Read more »

  • Alan says:

    12:39am | 26/08/09

    After reading through all these comments.. all I have in response is Wow.. Just wow. Now my standpoint I want to share.  I went to a catholic primary school.  And a catholic high school.  I would definitly say I have christian values.  You know what, I’m Gay.  I didn’t choose… Read more »

 

Her voice was clear, eloquent and well-mannered. “I’d like to have the AVO cancelled, please,” she told the clerk confidently.

The Tele's Warren Brown on the rise of AVOs

They see a lot, staff of local court registries and maybe this was nothing new. Curious, I turned to see who was speaking, not entirely sure of what I expected to see. Noting an appearance to match the voice - blonde, well-groomed and aged in her early-to-mid 20s - the young woman went on.

“You see, I was really drunk the other night, and I said a lot of things I didn’t mean.”

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  • Bud says:

    08:53am | 05/12/09

    I agree that AVO’s are too easy to get. This means that they can not be policed properly. However, the woman called April mentioned this artcile has been seriously maligned. I wonder where the writer has gotten her information. This writer should do her research and not rely on biased… Read more »

  • Jack says:

    06:53pm | 09/09/09

    Even the legal aid proponents advise complainants to “talk to the Police they will help you achieve the outcome you want”. This reeks of predetermining the outcome of the justice system. What justice system? When a man seeks to obtain a PFV order he is largely ignored or advised “don’t… Read more »

 

IT’S so tempting to see misfortune as a money spinner. Slipped on a grape at the supermarket? Sue!

Anyone can sue over anything ... Artist Warren Brown in The Daily Telegraph / File

Stressed out by an overbearing boss? Claim! Hurt your neck in a car accident? Collect!

But here’s something to consider before you speed dial a lawyer – a compensation payout may make life worse.

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  • Dale says:

    10:05am | 30/11/09

    Go Tina!  Although our situations differ there are times when we FIGHT for every inch of our existence, especially when families are the unwitting victims as well. In my case, I had worked in the welfare arena for 2 1/2 years with a very difficult client with whom I had… Read more »

  • Tina says:

    04:21pm | 17/09/09

    I’d like to leave a message to “Bitten”. I was homeless at the age of thirteen, raped at fifteen and while I was at home I was physically bashed and emotionally abused for years. I moved 200km’s from home and lived on the streets of Melbourne until I got my… Read more »

 

While the National Conference of the Labor Party has been protecting the sanctity of other people’s marriages (a topic for another day, perhaps), the House of Lords in the UK has been grappling with the complexities of helping one’s loved one board the plane to Switzerland. The case is called R (on the application of Purdy) v Director of Public Prosecutions.

Debbie Purdy after her court victory on assisted suicide.

Under the Suicide Act 1961, suicide is not illegal in England. However, the piece of legislation makes it a criminal offence to assist another to take their own life.

But assisted suicide is not an offence in Switzerland.

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  • watty says:

    05:16pm | 07/08/09

    Shane and Pete you have asked questions near to my heart. The N.T was used as the test laboratory for the Aboriginal Land Rights (N.T.) Act 1976 by Fraser and the Federal Government. No other State or Territory would have a bar of the conditions laid down in this Act… Read more »

  • Shane From Melbourne says:

    02:34pm | 07/08/09

    @Watty- It could have easily been an early morning rant at that idiot and Howard clone Kevin Rudd- their policies are mostly similar.  By what moral right does the federal parliament have to overide the legislation of the state or territory legislature? I know what legal right they use- the… Read more »

 

The humiliation of Marcus Einfeld is now complete. The NSW Court of Appeal struck him off this week, concurring with the argument of the NSW Bar Association that he is not a “fit and proper person” to practice as a lawyer ever again.

Einfeld arrives at the NSW Supreme Court for sentencing in March this year. Picture: Lindsay Moller

Representing the Bar Association, Barrister Christine Adamson SC said Einfeld’s speeding case showed he considered himself to be “above the law” and displayed “extraordinary hubris” in thinking he could use his “skill and ingenuity” as a respected lawyer of some 40 years to trick a court into cancelling a speeding fine.

A $77 speeding fine.The public reveled in it, as Einfeld for many years had been one of the greatest offenders of the deep-seated Australian belief that being massively up yourself is close on the worst crime a person can commit.

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  • davido says:

    02:25pm | 27/07/09

    Wow, some people really don’t know how to read do they? I said earlier ‘...so the fault rests totally with him.’ I am not defending his behaviour. I will dumb my points down even further so people can understand… 1. The VULTURE CULTURE in the media is disgusting and rarely… Read more »

  • stephen says:

    12:30pm | 27/07/09

    Apparently Mr Einfeld was, according to those in the know, an incompetent Federal Court Judge. He must be guilty of something. (And by the way Mr. Posen, what’s your point ?) Read more »

 

One of the first of the sadly limited number of court cases arising from the death of Dianne Brimble on a Pacific Sky cruise came to an end this week.

Its conclusion achieved nothing, other than to reinforce the public belief in the cavernous divide between community standards and the sentencing practices of the judiciary.

Dianne Brimble, in the blue jacket on the middle of the escalator, waves goodbye as she boards the cruise ship where she lost her life.

While there are other cases on the horizon which cannot legally be the subject of discussion here, the unsatisfactory conclusion of this week’s case involving one of the “Brimble Eight”, the execrable Leo Silvestri, has raised the worst case scenario surrounding the shocking death of this young woman.

Namely that the plodding nature of justice and the pernickety application of the law – all these things may conspire to ensure that no-one faces any genuine punishment over that fact that a woman was left for dead in a drugged stupor on the cold linoleum floor of a cheap cruise ship.

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  • irene says:

    04:23pm | 09/09/09

    I agreed with Dave C.It would have been great to see the response of those men involved in the death of Dianne B if their mothers / sisters /daughters went through   the same as Dianne B.I am sure they will be jumping with joy as they are nothing but… Read more »

  • stephen says:

    07:18pm | 04/07/09

    Yes David ; as no-one is responsible for anything any more, perhaps the good Judge can get the police to arrest the ship. These ratbags need 2 years in the lockup - the lot of them - no apportioning blame and no freebies. They’re good mates so let them stay… Read more »

 

WHO’D be a business owner in Australia?

With the way the Federal Government up-ends the apple cart every few months you’d have to have a thick skin, and a thick wallet, to want to have a crack at increasing the nation’s prosperity.

The Australian's cartoonist Jon Kudelka

One of my mates runs a solar energy company - an occupation unrivalled in its capacity to guarantee you endless sleepless nights, wondering when the Federal Government will deliver its next windfall, followed by a swift kick in the guts.

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  • Russell says:

    08:19pm | 05/07/09

    Small business has always been heralded as the home of innovation, which is recognised by the introduction of policies for investment allowances and R & D rebates. Yet these continue to swing back and forward every year as policy settings are tweaked for financial outcomes. In some ways, small business… Read more »

  • Tory says:

    04:02pm | 03/07/09

    It’s slapstick politics! Cue Benny Hill theme. I can’t believe that the Government comes up with an idea like the solar energy rebate, which then turns out to be immensely popular (great) but so bloody popular they cut off the rebate! They should have just ridden that pony till it… Read more »

 

Like Peter denying Jesus after the arrest, as dawn was breaking and the cock was getting ready to crow, Australia is given a third chance to acknowledge its inconvenient associations. Will we, like Peter, deny any association with or responsibility with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the detainees in Guantanamo? We probably will. We denied our own citizens in Guantanamo until the opinion polls started to turn dirty.

In the hood: Uighur supporters in Washington DC

Australia, through the support of the Howard government for the actions of the Bush Administration’s war on terror, has as much responsibility for the Uighurs, who were found to have been wrongly detained, as does the US and the Bush Administration.

We should accept the Uighurs as refugees and permanent residents. If they are returned to China, they face certain persecution and, possibly, death. To do otherwise would display a flaw in our national character.

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  • Les says:

    10:57am | 02/06/09

    If these people are found to be innocent then they should be compensated by America and then returned to wherever they had been first detained. Read more »

  • Sam says:

    10:34am | 02/06/09

    James - these people are not criminals. They have not been found guilty by a military tribunal let alone any civilian court that follows established rules of evidence etc.  I’m constantly perplexed by a (seemingly) persuasive belief that any person who is arrested or interviewed by the police is guilty.… Read more »

 

BRISBANE: Today’s news that AFP Commissioner Mick Keelty is stepping down in September provides an important opportunity for the Commonwealth Government to correct the accumulated mistakes of the past.

As one of Dr Haneef’s lawyers, my professional focus has been upon his legal rights. The AFP, under Keelty’s leadership, was responsible for many of the mistakes and failures of judgment which so impacted adversely on Dr Haneef and his family.

Mohammed Haneef: Put through the wringer by Keelty's AFP. Photo: Adam Ferguson.

Dr Haneef was in detention for 25 days before the charge against him was dropped. It took another six months and two court cases to remove the threat to his passport and visa rights. Throughout all of this, the AFP, under Mr Keelty, refused to admit its mistakes and continued to attack Dr Haneef’s reputation. It was not until just before Christmas, last year, with the release of the Clarke Report, that someone in an official position was prepared to say, definitively, that Dr Haneef had done nothing wrong.

The impact of the actions of the AFP on the lives of Dr Haneef and his family has been devastating. However, the Clarke Report reveals even more alarming concerns about the AFP which the government must address. It showed the AFP exhibited severe organisational problems under Mr Keelty.

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  • Andrew R. Hyde says:

    10:31am | 02/09/09

    As a victim of an AFP officer’s abuse of authority and incompetence I can only agree that this government agency and it’s officers be made accountable. Millions of taxpayer’s dollars were squandered and my life destroyed in an ill-conceived and futile attempt to bolster one woman’s flagging career. It’s not… Read more »

 

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