Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice
I was shocked but not surprised by the ABC’s Four Corners revelations last Monday night. Incontrovertible CCTV evidence of Aboriginal children subject to demeaning, debilitating and dehumanizing behaviour has galvanised the Australian community and prompted the creation of a Royal Commission with an...
Disability Rights
For most of us gaol is a theoretical concept. It's somewhere you go if you commit a serious crime. And that's fair enough. Neither of us have committed a crime, but in various roles during our lives we have visited places of detention. But for short times, and knowing we can always walk out. They are...
Asylum Seekers and Refugees
A comment on the current human rights issues faced by Australia in the processing of refugees and asylum seekers
Commission – General
I am gravely concerned that Australia's practices in relation to asylum seekers risk serious breaches of fundamental rights and freedoms under the human rights treaties by which Australia is bound.
Commission – General
Torture and various forms of terrorism have been practiced throughout history, though never on the scale we are now confronted with. The first visual records of police interrogation were discovered in a four thousand year old tomb in ancient Egypt. Since the pharaohs there have been many refinements in methods of inducing physical pain and gathering intelligence, most notably during the Spanish Inquisition, but more recently in the modern totalitarian state.
Disability Rights
George Bernard Shaw once said that the only alternative to torture in life is art. I'm not sure that you could my presentation this morning art, but I do hope it isn't torture.
Commission – General
I would like to begin this evening by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land on which we meet, the Wurundjeri People of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders past and present.
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