Valuing the Work of Community Lawyers’ to Resolve Systemic Problems – The Productivity Commission Report on Access to Justice Arrangements in Australia
In the past decade or more in Australia, creeping managerialism and efforts to reduce funding of services under the guise of ‘fiscal belt tightening’ and efficiency have threatened and sometimes...
Rethink needed as new Australian High Court Justice appointment seems to maintain gender imbalance
The appointment of Geoffrey Nettle QC, as the replacement for Justice Susan Crennan on the High Court of Australia when she retires next February calls, yet again, for a radical...
Improving the Law for Pregnant Women and Working Parents
Earlier this year I wrote about the preliminary data that the Australian Human Rights Commission (“AHRC”) had published which showed the high levels of workplace discrimination encountered by women who...
Will Australia learn from the EU’s mistakes on data retention?
Police officers, anti-terrorism officials and politicians all tell us that we need data retention laws, especially in a time of increased technological sophistication. This week, George Brandis—the Attorney General for...
Pregnancy Discrimination in the Australian Workplace
As part of its national review into pregnancy discrimination in the workplace, the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) recently released data from a national phone survey measuring discrimination in the...
Older Homeless Women in Australia
Australia is often cited as an economic success story. Decades of growth fuelled by the resources and agricultural industries enabled it to navigate the global financial crisis virtually unscathed. Indeed,...
Grootboom and the right to housing: A (Virtual) Comparative Conversation between students at UNSW and Oxford
Students from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the University of Oxford recently demonstrated the potential of a virtual classroom as a medium for facilitating debate and comparative...
Over to you, Parliament – The significance of the Australian High Court’s judgment on same-sex marriage
A striking feature of Australian High Court jurisprudence in recent years is the Court’s use of orthodox judicial analysis to decide issues of deep political controversy and high significance for...
The Commonwealth v The Australian Capital Territory: Marriage Equality in the High Court
On Thursday the High Court of Australia effectively struck down the nation’s first same-sex marriage laws. But there was a silver lining for marriage equality activists: in striking down marriage...
Australian judge lays down gauntlet for proponents of human rights instruments
Last week we featured a post by Professor Brice Dickson on whether the common law would adequately fill any void left by the Human Rights Act 1998 (UK) (HRA), should...
True Reconciliation Requires a Treaty
Treaties are accepted around the world as the means of reaching a settlement between Indigenous peoples and those who have settled their lands. Australia is the only Commonwealth nation that...
Wedding Crashers in Canberra?
The Australian Capital Territory made Australian history this week as the first Australian jurisdiction to provide for same-sex marriage. The ACT, Australia’s equivalent of the US District of Columbia, first...
