Prisoners Lives Are Still at Risk: An Interview With Ex-Inmate Damien Linnane
Victorian Supreme Court Justice Timothy Ginnane ordered on 1 May that the state’s justice department conduct a risk assessment of Port Phillip Prison in relation to COVID-19. The inquiry will include whether adequate cleaning and virus screening measures are taking...
Most Aussies Wouldn’t Go to a Pub or Restaurant Right Now, Survey Finds
As the PM and the Federal Health Minister continue to tell Australians that ‘life can’t go back to normal’ until many more of us download the CovidSafe app, a new survey shows that a significant number of Australians would be...
Labor’s Home Affairs Spokesperson Stirs Up Xenophobia
Obviously, shadowing Peter Dutton is getting a bit much for Labor’s Kristina Keneally, so last weekend the opposition home affairs spokesperson decided to simply ape the minister in an op-ed she wrote for the Herald recommending Australia slow its migrant...
Calls for Social Security Payments to be Permanently Increased
Sadly, for Australians living on the meagre $280 per week that was Newstart (recently rebranded to Job-seeker), it took a global pandemic for the Federal Government to implement a much-needed increase in the weekly payment. But it doesn’t look like...
What is the Offence of Sextortion in New South Wales?
Sextortion often occurs when victims are approached on social media or dating apps, then asked to switch to more private online platforms such as instant-messaging apps like Kik or Skype, where a video call can be recorded. Predators often then...
NSW Police Are Fining Teens for Visiting Their Friends
The controversial COVID-19 infringement notices that NSW police has been issuing since 26 March are some of the steepest on-the-spot fines available to it. With over a thousand now imposed statewide, the fines differ to many others as they can...
Former Mining Boss Heads Australia’s Economic Response to COVID-19
When Prime Minister Scott Morrison declared the closure of Federal Parliament in March 2020, he made a last minute announcement to the Australian public that a new National COVID-19 Coordination Commission (NCCC) would be created. The Commission’s job is to...
A Sensible Public Is Stopping the Spread of COVID-19, Not Heavy-Handed Policing
“Currently, Australia does not have widespread community transmission of COVID-19,” read the Department of Health website at 11 am on 1 May. At that time, there were 6,762 confirmed cases of COVID-19 nationwide, and 92 people had died as a...
Impossible to Distance in Detention: An Interview With Manus Detainee Farhad Bandesh
The subject of the ABC’s 20 April Q&A was COVID-19: Where to Next? And about 20 minutes into the program, long-term asylum-seeking detainee Farhad Bandesh appeared via video link to ask the panellists a question. The 38-year-old Kurdish man from...
Fossil Fuel Expansion Under the Cover of COVID-19
For those concerned that COVID-19 has somehow brought the Australian fossil fuel industry to a halt, you can rest assured it hasn’t. Indeed, the expansion of mining has simply continued in a “business as usual” manner. Construction at Adani’s Carmichael...
