An appeal by ACT director of Public Prosecutions, Victoria Engel, SC, has been dismissed by a Full Bench of the ACT Court of Appeal after only three minutes of deliberation. (more…)
Andrew Fraser
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DPP speaks out – budget crisis, blackmail or a balking of duty?
ACT director of Public Prosecutions Victoria Engel SC has upped the ante — dangerously so in the view of many in the legal profession — in a very public bid for further funds for her office. (more…)
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Courts brace for next wave of ‘sovereign citizens’
When I wrote about the “Cavalcade of the Cretinous” in February 2022, I thought the anti-vaccination early incarnations of “sovereign citizens” were just a hopeless joke (“Summernats without the sophistication”) that would quietly go away. (more…)
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Malign AI could change Australian election results, says judge
Justice David Mossop of the ACT Supreme Court has issued a call to arms for lawyers generally, and the High Court in particular, to prepare for palpable threats to “a small, naive democracy like Australia”. (more…)
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The Russians’ lost plot: will they find serenity or are they dreaming?
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Canberra Theatre. Patrons are advised that, for tonight’s performance of The Castle, the role of Mr Darryl Kerrigan will be played by Mr Vladimir Putin.” (more…)
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A couple of seats that could go against the anti-Dutton grain
“The people have spoken.” “We have a clear mandate.” Really? In many cases, like the landslides of 1975 and 1996, the above quotes are undoubtedly true. But in others, like 1984 and 1998, I’m not so sure. (more…)
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Trump versus a young man on a mission
Less than three months into the 48 that the world will have to endure his second presidency, Donald Trump is, on a charitable view, now pretty much a caricature of himself.
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Will Walter Sofronoff be prosecuted?
Maybe what Lehrmann Board of Inquiry chair Walter Sofronoff KC did was “serious corrupt conduct”, as the ACT Integrity Commission alleges. Or perhaps that description is “overreach”, as former Law Council of Australia president Arthur Moses SC told The Australian. (more…)
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Labor goes weak on reform
When I very briefly and greenly worked for two right-wing members of the second Hawke administration, “pissant” was the faction’s put down of choice. (more…)
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Will bail in Victoria get a battering under Battin?
Our annual trip to Queenscliff is a quaint step back in time: ye olde shoppes and seaside fun from a simpler time. (more…)
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Just say yes, Minister. It’s prison reform made simple
Many years ago, a number of lawyers lunching with an ACT judicial officer bemoaned their lot as a new Children’s Court Magistrate was rapidly filling the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre with their young clients. (more…)
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The prescience of Corporal Hijack
A year ago, Mussa Hijazi, a stone-throwing young teenager of the first Intifada who became a long-serving Canberra lawyer, laid out three options on how the conflict in Gaza would end. (more…)
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Inside out: powerful advocates have judges’ ears
The ACT Supreme Court was the scene of two uniquely powerful demonstrations of advocacy on the one evening last week. (more…)
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War powers reform: no ticker for a no-brainer
Worst of Friends by Suzanne Tripp Jurmain is a simply wonderful book, aimed at “pre-schoolers and up”. (more…)
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Bar hits out at Chief Justice
The ACT Bar Association has confronted Chief Justice (CJ) Lucy McCallum over her self-admitted controversial statements about juries in sexual-assault trials. (more…)
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Political void: The end of the Wharf
Forty (40) years ago, the ALP ran its national conference at what was then called Noah’s Lakeside Hotel, with uranium, Timor, taxation, David Combe and south-west Tasmania prominent in discussions. But, who is this meeting up on the dancefloor after the day’s debates and double-crossings? (more…)
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Clean slate for prison reform
The Canberra community decided on 19 October to remove from its parliament the two most recent ministers for corrections, Mick Gentleman (Labor) and Emma Davidson (Green). (more…)
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Absence of care: AMC prison a drug “supermarket”; force applied with “regularity”, report staff
The ACT’s prison is run by a clique, with detainee bashings covered up, staff bullied into silence and the library better labelled “a supermarket” where any drug desired was freely available. (more…)
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Sunlight needed to eradicate prison horrors
Reports of malfeasance involving staff at the Alexander Maconochie Centre, the ACT’s supposedly human-rights-compliant prison, are now too numerous and too frequent to lack substantial veracity. (more…)
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ACT legal eagles hit out at Chief Justice
The upper echelons of Canberra’s criminal bar are on a collision course with Chief Justice Lucy McCallum over the conduct of sexual-assault trials in the ACT. (more…)
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How the ACT Govt is making more people vulnerable
The ACT Labor-Greens coalition is widely seen as the most permissive and truly liberal government in the country. (more…)
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No, Minister. It’s you who should be in court
Even good minds can get criminal justice wrong, but usually for only so long. (more…)
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Departure of Justice Richard Refshauge: end of an era
It was a particularly technical legal point. The colleague was an experienced trial advocate with a case in which he felt there was a slim plot of fertile ground on which he might be able to appeal. But he just couldn’t quite work out how all the pieces might come together. (more…)
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Labor not tribal enough for three of its own
The ACT Labor-led Government might lead the nation in many worthy ways and it might, too, you might think, especially six months out from an election, be vigilant to avoid what many might see as an embarrassing own goal. But no… (more…)
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ACT law reform to be still-born?
ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury might get the feeling that the new Law Reform and Sentencing Advisory Council he established in November last year is channeling Freddie Mercury: they want it all, and they want it now. (more…)
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Police chief hits out – with compassion
ACT Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan has expressed alarm at the severe constraints on front-line policing in Canberra while showing great sympathy for principles of drug decriminalisation and raising the age of criminal responsibility. (more…)
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Indigenous incarceration
More than a quarter of Canberra’s daily average prison population is Indigenous but only 2 per cent of people in the ACT identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person. (more…)
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Giving science clout at court, and beyond
Juries seem either to love forensic scientists or just be baffled by them (or by the spin put on their findings by cunning counsel). Some judicial officers have been somewhat slower to embrace them – with potentially disastrous consequences, not just in judge-alone trials, but when evidence is ruled inadmissible and does not go to the jury. (more…)
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The High Court and the search for a Labor leader
It is more than 20 years since Labor Leader Simon Crean addressed Australian troops leaving to fight in the Bush-Blair-Howard war on Iraq. (more…)
