Archive for the 'Law' Category

Death penalty barred by federal legislation

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 week, 2 days ago
in Foreign policy, Government and Law
. 53 Comments

The Senate has passed, in a whisper, the Crimes Legislation Amendment (Torture Prohibition and Death Penalty Abolition) Bill 2009. The bill is largely symbolic, creating a new federal offence of torture (which is already a crime under any number of state and federal laws, including when committed overseas).

The more interesting provision is schedule 2, which bans the death penalty under any circumstances. Of course, the death penalty does not exist anywhere in Australia, so, again, it’s almost completely symbolic. What it does do is prevent a state government ever reintroducing the death penalty, and, thus, “ensure ongoing compliance with the Second Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.”

Obviously, the removal of any possibility of the death penalty being reintroduced is a great thing. No longer will the temptation exist, however remote, for a desperate state Premier or Opposition Leader to float the possibility of changing the law.

However, one thing about the mechanism by which this has been done does bother me slightly. The force of this law, were it ever to be tested, relies on the existence of an international treaty Australia has signed, and the external affairs power of the Australian constitution. Are there any legal impediments to a future federal government signing, say, “The International Treaty on the Abolition of Rights for Teh Gayz” with whatever reactionary foreign government they can find, and then using the same external affairs power to pass federal laws to override relevant state legislation?

Government: Don’t feed the trolls

Published
by
Mark
2 weeks, 2 days ago
in Authoritarianism, Crime, Ethics, Feminism, Life, Media, Politics, Race, Sociology and The Web
. 24 Comments

The last couple of weeks have seen a fair bit of furore about those intertubes. Anna Bligh wrote to Facebook about the defacing of a couple of memorial sites for a child and a teenager who’d been murdered in Queensland. Nick Xenophon suggested an Internet Ombudsperson, a suggestion Kevin Rudd applauded. There’ve also been numerous controversies about high school students posting racist groups, or offensive ones (for instance, effectively calling for attacks on sex workers). All this no doubt warrants condemnation – but it’s also worth observing that only a certain subsection of offensive content (usually involving children in one way or other) comes to the attention of the media and politicians. Little outrage is directed to the much larger subset of racist groups on Facebook (which don’t happen to be set up by high school kids), or the everyday misogyny that permeates much of the online space.

There’s no doubt that there are problems with Facebook’s method of dealing with offensive content. But the fundamental errors in this debate are twofold:

(a) Social networking sites are far more akin to phone networks than a traditional publishing model. A huge multiplicity of users constantly and simultaneously post content. Unlike talking on a phone, it leaves a permanent trace, but it’s a much better analogy;

(b) The direction of causation is the wrong way round. It’s not that the internet encourages people to do dumb and wrong things. It’s that people do dumb and wrong things, and they do them on the internet too.

The noise coming from politicians, and the ’solutions’, make one wonder whether they understand at all how social networking works. Part of the problem is one very easily resolved through taking more responsibility on the part of group creators for the little bit of the internet they set up, and using privacy and content management tools intelligently.

There’s an interesting take on all this from Colin Jacobs of Electronic Frontiers Australia, from whom I’ve borrowed the title of this post, and for a deeper examination of the issues, I’d also recommend the Oxford Internet Institute’s report on balancing freedom of speech and child protection online, which seeks to find some common ground between interlocutors who often seem to talk past one another.

Guilt, blame and failure

Published
by
Anna Winter
2 weeks, 6 days ago
in Ethics, Law and Relationships
. 138 Comments

For more than a year now, the Perth sf/f community has faced a situation in which a woman who was sexually assaulted (who I will call L) and the man who publicly admitted to doing it (who I will call T) both wanted to attend the annual science fiction convention (known as Swancon). For numerous reasons, none of them surprising to anyone who has been paying attention to the world, L did not press charges, but still didn’t want to share a convention space with him for a weekend.

So a group of well-meaning, although ultimately misguided, people tried to put the responsibility onto the governing board to somehow prevent T from attending so that she could attend in peace. It’s this aspect of the issue that I wish to discuss. For a long while, a range of options were raised, discussed, and none received widespread support. Should T be banned, and if so for how long? Could the committee simply refuse to sell him a membership? Would it be possible to arrange a “time share” in which they each attended on alternate days? More constitutionally-minded people argued (I believe correctly) that, as an incorporated body, there were limitations to the constitution that needed to be addressed, but that these changes must not be rushed in order to deal with one case, given the potential for future abuse in any new power hastily granted to the board. Change, even if it was possible, must happen with very careful consideration of how any new rules would work in all situations, not just the one they were faced with at the time.

Continue reading ‘Guilt, blame and failure’

Religion, politics and the “mainstream”

Published
by
Mark
1 month, 1 week ago
in Law, Life, Parenting, Policy, Politics, Religion, Sexuality and Sociology
. 48 Comments

2009 ended with a flurry of discussion on religion and politics, and it’s a theme I imagine we’re going to hear a lot more of in 2010.

I was ruminating on this question because of a couple of phrases which have come up this week about political events.

In Queensland, State Parliament has been debating the decriminalisation of altruistic surrogacy (where there is no payment involved). It’s the last jurisdiction where this is illegal, and members of the Legislative Assembly have a conscience vote. Much attention has focused on the fact that the bill enables same sex couples to access surrogacy, and you can get a sense of some of the rhetoric this is producing from opponents here.

We’ve heard, among other things, about “traditional Queensland families”.

Meanwhile, Tony Abbott has justified his support for the threatened preselection of David Clarke by describing his views as “mainstream”, writing to New South wales party members:

The letter argues that Mr Clarke should not be seen as having extreme views when all he does is go “to church on Sundays” and respect “traditional values”.

Yet the 2006 census found that only 63% of Australians describe their religion as Christian, and research found in 2001 that only 19% of Christians go to church regularly (defined as at least once a month). In absolute numbers, there were slightly fewer self-described Christians in 2006 than in 2001, and this identification is significantly skewed by age. Nor should it be assumed that all of, or even a majority of non-church attending Christians sign up to the suite of values defined as “traditional”, and even less so, that all want to see such values embodied in the law of the land.

Yet, in political debate, and in decisions which radically affect people’s life choices, the invocation of such values, and the influence of lobby groups which champion them, appear to have a presumed legitimacy which should be unwarranted in a secular democracy.

Documentation on the legislative process of inquiry into the framing of the bill can be found here.

Elsewhere: Andrew Bartlett on the Queensland Parliament’s surrogacy conscience vote.

Update: John Birmingham on the LNP and the surrogacy debate.

Kookaburras sitting on an old gum tree, interfering with creativity

Published
by
Robert Merkel
1 month, 2 weeks ago
in Art, Culture and Law
. 191 Comments

It’s official; Men at Work ripped off Kookaburra in the flute hook of Down Under. ABC story here. You can read the actual judgement here.

I’m completely unsurprised with the judge’s findings. But, to me, it shows that copyright, as is currently constituted, has become a monster that serves few except for a small number of very large multinational corporations, and has-been musicians and their inheritors.

Continue reading ‘Kookaburras sitting on an old gum tree, interfering with creativity’

Democracy, we hardly knew ye

Published
by
Mercurius
1 month, 4 weeks ago
in Law, Politics and USA
. 43 Comments

In a 5-4 decision, the US Supreme Court has brought down a ruling that puts paid to the existing framework for campaign financing, enabling unfettered donations and financing for corporations and labor (sic) organizations (sic).

Unless Congress finds a way to regulate campaign financing in a manner that the SCOTUS finds Constitutionally acceptable, there can be no legislative roadblocks to the buying and selling of candidates and legislation.

At last, all Americans have achieved equality before the law: One Dollar, One Vote.

Well, at least it’s out in the open now. The legal inviolability of corporate personhood ensures that Flesh-Americans can have all the freedom they want, as long as they don’t tread on the toes of the Leviathans who will henceforth determine who governs and what laws they enact.

This Democracy is proudly brought to you by the good people at Blue Cross, Altria, Exxon, Pfizer, the NRA and Wal-Mart.

Guest post by Tim Watts: “I’m not Racist, but… I’m Complacent”

Published
by
Guest Poster
2 months ago
in Activism, Australiana, Crime, Culture, Education, Ethics, Immigration, International, Media, Melbourne, Politics, Race, Sociology and The Web
. 351 Comments

My mate Tim Watts, who’s been doing some great work online on violent racist incidents in Melbourne, has provided this guest post. Previous discussion of the spate of attacks on Indian students at LP can be found here. -MB

“I’m not Racist, but… I’m Complacent”

Australians are rightfully proud of the good thing we’ve got going on here. We know that we live in god’s own country and most of us wouldn’t swap it for anything in the world. There’s nothing wrong with that – in fact I couldn’t agree with it more. However, one area in which we’re certainly not world leaders is self reflection. Most of us are pretty happy with our lot in life and don’t feel the need to risk it by asking too many questions of ourselves. As a result, we’ve made avoiding direct public discussions about the (relatively minor) imperfections in the Australian way of life an art form. It’s trite, but it’s the Australian way to dodge any issues that have the potential to make us uncomfortable with a dismissive ‘She’ll be right’ or ‘No worries’.

I had cause to reflect on this recently when I posted a bit of a spray about the inadequacy of the police response to the recent attacks on Indians in Melbourne on my Facebook profile. This deliberately direct comment provoked some very odd responses (both public and private) from ordinarily sensible people. While the content of these responses was extremely varied, they had one fairly consistent theme – a desperate avoidance of confronting the role that racism (subjective or structural) has played in these attacks.

I knew that Mark shared my frustration at people’s reluctance to confront the issue head on, so to try and keep up the momentum for addressing the core of this problem I offered to set out a factual basis for discussion and respond to some of the more common dodges that I’ve seen employed to avoid these facts.

Continue reading ‘Guest post by Tim Watts: “I’m not Racist, but… I’m Complacent”’

Google grows a pair?

Published
by
Phil
2 months, 1 week ago
in Activism, Authoritarianism, China, Economics, Ethics, Foreign policy, Government, Law, Markets, Media, Nationalism, Policy, Politics, Security, Technology and Trade
. 22 Comments

Google.

We launched Google.cn in January 2006 in the belief that the benefits of increased access to information for people in China and a more open Internet outweighed our discomfort in agreeing to censor some results. At the time we made clear that “we will carefully monitor conditions in China, including new laws and other restrictions on our services. If we determine that we are unable to achieve the objectives outlined we will not hesitate to reconsider our approach to China.”

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

The decision to review our business operations in China has been incredibly hard, and we know that it will have potentially far-reaching consequences. We want to make clear that this move was driven by our executives in the United States, without the knowledge or involvement of our employees in China who have worked incredibly hard to make Google.cn the success it is today. We are committed to working responsibly to resolve the very difficult issues raised.

Continue reading ‘Google grows a pair?’

Fairness

Published
by
Anna Winter
2 months, 1 week ago
in Crime, Law and WA Government
. 241 Comments

Despite attempts by the WA Government to make this into a luxury car thing, or an equal before the law thing, I think it’s clear to anyone who values the rule of law that this is bullshit.

A PERTH doctor is unable to recover his $200,000 Lamborghini after it was seized by police who caught his mechanic driving it at speeds up to 70km/h over the limit.

The mechanic was allegedly clocked driving the luxury vehicle at more than 160km/h in a 90km/h zone in Perth’s east yesterday.

The doctor who owned the car had left it in the care of the garage where the mechanic worked.

Under Western Australia’s anti-hoon laws, police can impound any car exceeding the speed limit by more than 60km/h, even if it is not the property of the driver.

[snip]

The Lamborghini’s owner did not have extraordinary circumstances which met the criteria for the car’s early release.

“We try to be fair, without favours, so whether it’s a Lamborghini or whether its a Kingswood or a Holden Commodore, we judge it fair, case by case,” Mr Gregson said.

“This case did not meet the grounds of an extraordinary hardship.”

I guess innocent unless proven guilty should not be an extraordinary circumstance, although sadly I don’t think that’s what they mean. It really doesn’t matter whether the guy has one car, or a hundred cars. It’s not about hardship. It’s about the fact that he is being punished for someone else’s crime (a crime which, I might add, has not yet been proven in a court of law).

This must be how we keep Hitler out power.

Sea Shepherd and the ICR play chicken over whaling

Published
by
Robert Merkel
2 months, 1 week ago
in Environment and Law
. 155 Comments

You’ve all undoubtedly seen the news reports about the Sea Shepherd’s ship, the Ady Gil, colliding with the Japanese whaling ship Shonan Maru No. 2. Andrew Bartlett has a post on the issue. His opening paragraph contains the following claim:

The news that a vessel of the Japanese whaling fleet has deliberately rammed and sunk a small vessel of the Sea Shepherd fleet in the open ocean will lift this issue to a whole new level. It could well lead to serious harm to diplomatic and other relations between Australia and Japan.

Whether the collision consisted of deliberate ramming or not is, of course, the question, There are two pieces of video footage, one shot from the Shonen Maru 2, and one from another Sea Shepherd vessel, which shed some light on this.

Continue reading ‘Sea Shepherd and the ICR play chicken over whaling’

Indian students and criminal violence

Published
by
Mark
2 months, 2 weeks ago
in Crime, International, Melbourne and Politics
. 235 Comments

The tragic murder of Nitin Garg has revived debate about violence against Indian students in Australia, spilling over into a range of statements at Ministerial level in both countries.

I think there is no doubt that hate crimes occur in Australia, and that it would be futile to deny that racism is a real problem in this nation.

However, there are a few issues around these events worthy of comment.

My impression, and it’s only that, is that the majority of these crimes appear to have occurred in Melbourne. I don’t think that’s because there’s a particularly high proportion of Indian students studying there. It may be higher, but there is certainly a large number in Brisbane. Is there something particular to Melbourne that may account for this?

Secondly, I wonder, above and beyond educational measures universities and others may have implemented to advise new students about safety, what can be done? The response to this, and previous incidents, seems to me to carry a demand in its wake that the government take action, but it’s not at all clear to me what action would be desirable or effective. I am sure, though, that the disavowal of racism, which cannot be unrelated to other issues in the Australian-Indian bilateral relationship, and concerns about the image Australia projects more broadly, is not helpful.

Elsewhere: Senator Sarah Hanson-Young at GreensBlog.

Update: New post.

All clear in McGurk inquiry

Published
by
Phil
4 months ago
in Ethics, Law, NSW Government, Politics and Sydney
. 3 Comments

As Imre Salusinszky noted a few days ago, the McGurk inquiry into planning decisions made for land in the Badgery’s Creek area of western Sydney has found that, ‘no NSW Labor politician or government official has acted corruptly.’

In handing down its report, the inquiry said it found no corrupt activity in relation to the land.

“It’s correct to say that we did not find any corrupt activity in that regard,” inquiry chair and Nationals MP Jenny Gardiner said.

However, the inquiry, which included two days of public hearings, more generally put the spotlight on the potential influence of property developers in the planning system.

As such, the report calls for wide-ranging reform of NSW election and campaign funding laws and in particular, tighter regulation of political donations.

This follows Premier Rees promises at the the eventful annual State Labor conference, held last week, to revamp how Government deals with lobbyists and developers.

Continue reading ‘All clear in McGurk inquiry’

Crime and punishment

Published
by
Paul Norton
4 months ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Crime and Life
. 11 Comments

Having re-read the book earlier this year, it is unnerving to reflect on how closely life has imitated art in this awful story from Tasmania.

Another apology

Published
by
Robert Merkel
4 months ago
in Crime, History, Parenting and Politics
. 28 Comments

Both Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull were unreserved, and eloquent, in their apology to the “Forgotten Australians”.

The Forgotten Australians are the child migrants who were shipped out to various church-run institutions, deprived of connection with their extended families, and in many cases subjected to physical and sexual abuse.

Both Rudd and Turnbull expressed a commitment to ensure that children in state care are never again subject to such abuses. That’s the hard part, of course. The Herald Sun has recently run a series of articles (strangely not online) claiming that Victoria’s youth training centers are “dysfunctional”. The solutions proposed are straight out of the tabloid “tough love” textbook, of course, but if there’s any substance to the claims in the stories we’re still a very long way from adequately protecting all children in the care of the state.

CORRECTION: The apology was to all of those in state care of the era, not just the child migrants.

None out of two is pretty bad, actually

Published
by
Anna Winter
4 months, 1 week ago
in Authoritarianism, Government and Law
. 205 Comments

Is it breaking Godwin’s Law when you compare something to Hitler, but in a good way?

There has been fiery debate in State Parliament over the government’s legislation proposing greater stop and search powers for police, with comparisons made to Nazi Germany.

The legislation would allow police to search people for weapons and drugs in areas such as Northbridge without having to prove grounds of suspicion.

Last night Liberal backbencher Peter Abetz spoke in support of the legislation and used the example of Hitler.

He said the dictator gained support because he provided people security in a time of anarchy.

…

“When it comes to the crunch, people prefer to be safe than to have freedom,” he said.

[my emphasis]

When clarifying his comments he managed to make things even worse:

Mr Abetz says he was not citing Hitler as an example of effective security, but was merely repeating his German mother’s explanation of how Hitler gained the support of the German people.

It’s not the law itself that’s Nazi-like, you see. It’s the WA Government. Can I come live with you please?