Ten years on from the Australia-US Free Trade Agreement, Australia is entering another round of negotiations towards the new and controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership. In this Free Trade Scorecard series…
- ARC Future Fellow, Australian National University
The High Court of Australia has declared federal funding of the school chaplains program unconstitutional, largely because it doesn’t meet the legal criteria for authorising such payments. But this lack…
As we approach the Australian federal election, trade minister Richard Marles recently confirmed Australia will not sign the Trans Pacific Partnership Trade Agreement if it includes an investor-state dispute…
Despite living in a famously sunny country, we’ve been getting reports of widespread vitamin D deficiency for some time now. The solution to this problem is simply the judicious use of a plentiful, if…
Should ecosystems have legally enforceable rights? It might sound like a ridiculous idea, but a global debate on this is in full swing. The Constitution of Ecuador now recognises rights of nature. Environmental…
Australian public interest regulators usually have a very imperfect picture of how much anti-competitive or fraudulent activity is occurring in areas such as health care. But there’s a better approach…
The recently released film Life of Pi directed by Ang Lee and based on Yann Martel’s novel of the same name, is a fable for our climate change times. Much of the plot involves the struggles of a teenage…
Many times in human history governments have tried to write policies based around future technologies and missed identifying the transformational keys. In the 1970s, for example, few if any horizon-scanning…
The Australian High Court has found that the Gillard Government’s Tobacco Plain Packaging Act 2011 does not breach that section of the constitution that prohibits federal legislation acquiring property…
IDEAS AND OWNERSHIP: The concept of protecting ideas and innovation by legal means dates back to antiquity. But many of our existing laws are under strain, their suitability and ultimate purpose called…
Boys are likely be offered subsidised vaccinations against the sexually transmitted, wart and cancer-causing human papillomavirus (HPV) following a government committee recommendation to expand the use…
Boehringer Ingelheim, manufacturer of the expensive anti-clotting drug dabigatran, has initiated a lobbying campaign to get it listed on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). The company’s efforts…
At a time when the “Occupy Wall Street” protests against corporate greed are proliferating in the United States and around the world, it’s ironic to read the floating of yet another corporate “get-even-more…
An expansion of the fiduciary duties of doctors towards patients could provide better protection to those suffering from medical mishaps. Such an expansion would require doctors to promptly disclose adverse…
Plants have been making fuel and food from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide for billions of years. Oil, coal, wood and natural gas can be called “old-photosynthesis” fuels. As the human population approaches…
Federal and state governments in Australia appear much less successful than their United States counterparts in recovering taxpayers funds lost to suspected large-scale corporate fraud. For instance, there…
According to a recent report in the Canberra Times, Thomas Barry Moore, a former air force serviceman, has been in a persistent vegetative in a Chinese hospital for 118 days. He suffered a stroke on December…
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