Constitutional scholar Greg Craven is calling for a new round of constitutional conventions to redefine the federal system. Noting that “[t]he word is that the Commission of Audit will recommend serious restitution of powers over school education and much of health to the states”, he suggests looking to history for a practical way forward: “Oddly, there is a pretty clear solution to this particularly murky problem. We have been down this road before, over a century ago. When Australia wanted to go from six bickering colonies to one continental nation, we faced all these issues and more. The process we used was a constitutional convention where our best and brightest — and most bearded — thrashed the issues out. … It worked last time.”
Handlebar-cam highlights danger of “dooring”
A handlebar-cam video has highlighted the danger facing cyclists using bike lanes in the CBD. The video shows a passenger hitting the cyclist with the door of a taxi, refusing to identify himself, and blaming the cyclist for the incident. Rule 269(3) of the Road Safety Rules 2009 (Vic) makes it an offence to “cause a hazard to any vehicle by opening a door of a vehicle”. The penalty was significantly increased in 2012, because “dooring” is a serious risk to cyclists’ safety, particularly in the CBD.
Should negligent police compensate crime victims?
“If a woman is assaulted or killed and police don’t do all they can to protect her from attack, should the police be held liable in negligence?” In Australia, the law is unclear. The NT police reached a confidential out-of-court settlement with Tiffany Paterson, whose complaints were ignored by police before she was beaten and slashed in the face by her former partner. In WA, the family of Andrea Pickett are suing the police for their failure to prevent her being brutally murdered in front of her daughter. Australian lawyers are attempting to develop this area of the common law because in the UK, the High Court awarded damages to two victims of a serial rapist. It held that “a series of systemic failings” breached “a duty imposed upon the police to conduct investigations into particularly severe violent acts perpetrated by private parties in a timely and efficient manner”. However, the UK claim was brought under the Human Rights Act 1998 (UK), and no equivalent legislation exists in Australia.
Ethnic leaders oppose weaker anti-racism law
The only Indigenous MP in the federal government’s caucus has threatened to cross the floor if Attorney-General George Brandis’s plan to water down anti-racism laws goes too far. He joins representatives of the Indigenous, Greek, Jewish, Chinese, Arab, Armenian and Korean communities, who said the proposals were “morally repugnant”. The government’s move is in response to a Federal Court finding that Andrew Bolt breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth). In a series of articles, Bolt questioned whether “fair-skinned Aboriginal people … are sufficiently of Aboriginal race, colour or ethnicity to be identifying as Aboriginal”, and this “offend[ed], insult[ed], intidimidate[d] or humiliate[d]” Aboriginal people. He could not rely on the “free speech” defence in section 18D because his reports were “erroneous”, “mocking and derisive”, and were therefore not published “reasonably and in good faith”. Press reports suggest the government is proposing to amend both sections 18C and 18D. The Australian Human Rights Commission has published an explanation of how the laws currently work, with case examples.
Think tank calls for Aus-NZ merger
Stephen Grenville of the Lowy Institute, a foreign policy think tank, has suggested that Australia should “get together with New Zealand to make one country with 28 million people.” He cites economic benefits and the compatibility of the two countries’ political cultures and legal systems, and suggests that a shared currency would be a good starting point. Proposals to include New Zealand as a State in Australia’s federation have a long history. It has the same status as Western Australia in the preamble to the Constitution: neither is mentioned in the first recital, but both are included as possible States in paragraph 6.
Council’s consultation over cat curfew causes concern
A group of Yarra Ranges residents has organised a petition opposing the council’s new “cat curfew”, which requires owners to keep their cats confined to the owner’s property at all times. The council advertised the proposed changes in local newspapers and online, and gauged support through a web poll, but cat owners say they weren’t consulted. “Good luck with the 24-hour cat prison,” one resident wrote. “How about I lock up your children in my laundry all day?” The council says the curfew is intended to protect native wildlife in the area.
Legal aid cuts “unquestionably compromise” Family Court
The Chief Justice of the Family Court of Australia, Diana Bryant, says that due to funding cuts to Victoria Legal Aid, “the system is compromised, unquestionably”. Increasingly, parties are required to represent themselves, which puts them in a difficult position: “You have a party who’s not only going to be cross-examined by their former partner about, perhaps, violence of which they’re the victim, but they have to run their case and they have to cross-examine their partner. And for many people that’s impossible and it leads to settlements.”
Journalists want the right to protect their sources
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, a trade union representing journalists, has called for universal national “shield laws” to protect journalists’ sources. Billionaire mining heiress Gina Rinehart has twice subpoenaed journalists in a bid to force them to reveal the sources of their information about her in newspaper reports and a biography. In both cases, she failed because Western Australia introduced shield laws in 2012, which require that the “starting point will be that if a journalist has promised not to disclose an informant’s identity, that journalist or their employer cannot be forced to give evidence that would disclose the informant’s identity“. While the model Uniform Evidence Act includes a shield provision, it has not been adopted in every State, and is not as broad as the WA law.
New restraint orders to limit vexatious litigants
The Napthine Government has proposed a crackdown on “tribunal pests and costly court time-wasters”. Under the existing system, a person can only be declared a “vexatious litigant” by the Supreme Court on the application of the Attorney-General; the bill is a response to a parliamentary committee’s call for a more flexible system. According to the explanatory memorandum, “The Bill enables the Supreme Court, the County Court, the Magistrates’ Court and VCAT to make various types of ‘litigation restraint orders’, which increase in severity in accordance with a person’s litigation history and pattern of vexatious behaviour.” A vexatious litigant is prohibited from launching a legal case without first being granted permission by the court.
Close SA election prompts calls for new boundaries
After Saturday’s election in South Australia, Labor might cling to power in a minority government. Although counting continues, it is expected that two independent MPs will hold the balance of power in the lower house. The Liberal Party is complaining that although it won almost 53% of the statewide two-party-preferred vote, it did not translate into a majority of seats. This occurs when a party performs strongly in its own safe seats, but narrowly loses in marginal seats. Former SA premier John Olsen wants the system changed: “The fact that we have now had 1989, 2002, 2010 and 2014 (elections) where the Liberal Party has got 52 or 53 per cent of the vote and hasn’t been able to form government is clearly indicating that the process by which the boundaries are drawn is not producing a result that the majority of South Australians want.” The Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission is required to draw the borders between electorates “fairly”, and says this is a difficult and imprecise task.