The issue is how do we meet the legitimate aims of this legislation whilst protecting the fundamental liberty rights at stake in the criminal justice process.
Read More
Why is the government indulging in this reprehensible behaviour? Because it is trying to arrest its way out of the youth crime problem. The Council accepts that there is a youth crime problem. However, this problem cannot be solved by arresting and detainig more children”
Read More
Mr O’Gorman said there is clearly a problem with a cohort of juveniles committing car thefts and violent crime but attacking Judges and Magistrates who cannot defend themselves publicly is a cheap and easy political stunt.
Read More
This legislation was introduced in 2004 at the peak of concerns about terrorism. Since then, we have learned that the law inappropriately prioritizes the secrecy of national security information over the administration of justice
Read More
The Folbigg Pardon highlights the necessity to establish a national Criminal Cases Review Commission in Australia.
Read More
This broad definition of ‘information’ and over-classification of what amounts to ‘national security information’ has serious implications. Anything that could fall within these definitions could be withheld from the defendant (or, in civil proceedings, withheld from one party[1]), which relates to issues of due process discussed above. These broad definitions and scope of the Act increased the encroachment of the executive on due process and a right to a fair trial. As a result, the executive is given ‘enormous scope for unwarranted interference in the administration of justice’
Read More
We remain of the view that you cannot end racism and other pernicious ideas by censorship and policing. What needs to be done is to focus on addressing the root causes of why some people are attracted to such ideologies in the first place, including social isolation, growing economic insecurity and mistrust in government and the media.
Read More
The Collaery, McBride and Boyle cases have to be seen as part of a new trend whereby evidence is admitted into court and is available to one side (the prosecution, in criminal matters) but not to the other even though that evidence may be used against them. The circumstances in which this evidence is selectively admitted is much broader than the previous public interest immunity exception placed on national security. Much leeway is being granted to the Executive to exclude evidence from scrutiny
Read More
It is this nightmare we have come to discuss today in the form of the use of ‘AI’ to make decisions that could impact a person’s access to benefits or services, or could be used to make a judgement about whether or not they are law abiding
Read More
Why haven’t the guideline judgment provisions of the Queensland Penalties and Sentencing Act been used by the Premier and the Police Minister to ask the Appeal Court to remedy supposedly soft sentences by Magistrates?
Read More
“Fortunately, Mr Sofronoff found it most unlikely that any innocent people have been wrongly convicted as a result of the lab failures. However, the UK Commission has variously estimated that between two to five percent of the British prison population at any given time are victims of miscarriages of justice. We see no reason why that would not be the case here.”
Read More
“The fact that people who complain that they are the victims of sexual offences are given lifelong anonymity and under the Attorney-General’s proposal people merely accused of such offences will be named shows how the balance between protecting the rights of the accuser and the accused is being so wrongly and unfairly skewed towards the accuser”, Mr O’Gorman said.
Read More
We start from the premise that prisoners including those on probation, parole or other post detention supervised release, do not have the same privacy rights as ordinary citizens, but they are not stripped of their entire right to privacy
Read More
The Council maintains its position that the advancement of women’s equality and protecting them from violence cannot come at the expense of fundamental legal principles and arrangements designed to protect the liberty of everyone
Read More
“To change the double jeopardy law to get the State Government out of a political problem of its own making must be fought robustly and vigorously”, Mr OGorman said.
Read More
“Faulty science has been one of the leading causes of miscarriages of justice in Queensland and throughout Australia for decades going back to the infamous Lindy Chamberlain monumental forensic scientific failure in the 1980s,” Mr Cope said.
Read More
It is this Council’s position that the monitoring role by the CCC is ineffective both in respect of individual cases and in dealing with trends in relation to complaints against police. While high level corruption or other serious police offending is investigated and prosecuted from time to time by the CCC all other cases are handed back to the QPS with a so-called monitoring role by the CCC. It is submitted that Queensland should adopt the New South Wales procedure for investigating complaints against police namely that there should be a standalone body separate from the QPS and the CCC to investigate complaints against Police.
Read More
As John Stuart Mill argued the preventive power of the State is, “far more liable to be abused, to the prejudice of liberty, then the punitory function; for there is hardly any part of the legitimate freedom of action of a human being that would not admit of being represented, and fairly too, as increasing the facilities for some form or other of delinquency.”
Read More
“It is the QCCL’s view that the materials produced by Mr Thomas are sufficient to justify the Queensland government appointing an independent expert to conduct an inquiry into the allegations made by Dr Wright in order to ensure that public confidence in the administration of justice in the State is maintained.”
Read More