Criminal trials in these courts often occur behind closed doors presided over by clerics, and there’s often no evidence beyond a confession extracted by means of torture.
- Professor of Law; Kim Santow Chair of Law and Social Justice, University of Sydney
The NSW Anti-Discrimination Act is in a state of neglect. Considered state-of-the-art 40 years ago, the law today reads like a lot of mini anti-discrimination acts strung together.
The federal government’s bill is striking in one respect: it actively allows a person to discriminate on the basis of their religious beliefs.
Rather than asking, “How can we best address religious discrimination in Australia?”, Christian Porter is saying, “This is what we’re doing about religious discrimination; any objections?”.
Donald Trump’s confusion about rights is perhaps no greater than that of many people, who are given little reason by political leaders to understand rights seriously.
The Australian Law Reform Commission has given George Brandis a report that does all that it reasonably could, while falling well short of what it was asked to do.
Attorney-General George Brandis told the ABC that Australia co-operates with the United Nations in relation to its human rights obligations. Is that right?
The federal government has to be on the back foot after a Law Reform Commission report identified that It has been the champion of many rights-limiting laws.
No-one is inclined to refer to human rights in public debate in Australia when its leaders either avoid the idea or attack it, and the news media are silent on it.
Early in 2014, federal Attorney-General George Brandis released a proposal to significantly amend our law against racial vilification, Sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act, on the strength…
Federal attorney-general George Brandis is serious when he says that under his watch, “people do have a right to be bigots”. As drafted (and it is very poorly drafted), his proposed changes to sections…
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