Pauline Hanson clashed with NSW Council for Civil Liberties President, Josh Pallas during a senate inquiry into the Covid-19 vaccination status. Mr Pallas stated the NSWCCL argued that governments should not mandate vaccines outside of settings where the risk of transmission was high, such as in healthcare settings.

He also stated that the decision should be on individual businesses to decide whether employees should need to be vaccinated based on “their own circumstances” and whether unvaccinated staff would present a safety risk.

MEDIA STATEMENT - Issued in partnership with National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services, Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement South Australia, Aboriginal Legal Service of Western Australia, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service (QLD) Ltd, North Australian Aboriginal Justice Agency, Tasmanian Aboriginal Legal Service, Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services (ATSILS) around Australia are calling on the federal government to deliver a $250 million emergency support package to prevent imminent service freezes and unjust incarceration of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

At the frontline, certain service locations in regional Australia face freezes within four weeks. A dramatic increase in service freezes can only be prevented or reversed with additional core funding from the Commonwealth.

The interim economic inclusion committee has recently released a report that sets out the catastrophic impact that the current rate of the jobseeker payment has had on many Australians. Currently, only $50 a day is payable to a single individual, which is two-thirds of the single rate of age pension. This is completely unsustainable for anyone living in modern Australia.

NSW Council for Civil Liberties committee member Stephen Blanks yesterday told a hearing of the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in regard to The Criminal Code Amendment (Prohibition of Nazi Symbols) Bill 2023 (the Bill) that the legislation didn’t “go to the heart of the problem”.

Mr Blanks argued criminal law was only one of the required tools to prevent Nazi ideology and wouldn’t be enough on its own. Freedom of expression does not give licence to individuals to engage in expression which engenders hate and incites violence. He said the proposed legislation must iron out any doubts over people who might be displaying Nazy symbols for educational purposes or other reasons who weren’t about promoting hateful ideology.

NSW Council for Civil Liberties President, Josh Pallas, appeared before the Senate Committee on Education and Employment Legislation yesterday. The Bills being considered are sponsored by Senators Pauline Hanson and Matt Canavan. They suggest that States should not be able to restrict freedom of movement from State to State of any Australian citizen and they suggest that employers should not be able to ask an employee to receive a COVID-19 vaccination.

In our view, the Bills in question, unreasonably and disproportionately protect the unvaccinated at the expense of the rights of other members of the community. Based on the generally accepted medical science, the Bills are incompatible with human rights.

Australia’s domestic intelligence agency Asio has welcomed a Coalition bill to ban Nazi symbols including the Sieg Heil salute, telling a parliamentary inquiry it would help prevent recruitment and radicalisation by far-right extremists.

The Victorian Government announced thay would implement a ban of the salute after a group of men from the National Socialist Network repeatedly performed the salute on the steps of Victoria’s parliament last month. This prompted shadow attorney general, Michaelia Cash to introduce a federal bill. 

The Australian government has agreed to release the full findings of the Double Six tragedy where a Nomad N-22B aircraft crashed and killed 11 people in 1976.

Australia's Administrative Appeals Tribunal in Sydney yesterday decided to allow the release in its entirety of Australia's reports on the tragedy. This followed a request made to National Archives of Australia (NAA) by the former Sabah chief minister Tan Sri Harris Mohd Salleh.

The NSW Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL) welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Finance and Public Administration References Committee (Committee) in regard to the administration of the referendum into an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice (Referendum).

NSWCCL's submission focuses on key issues relating to the disenfranchisement of First Nations people, misinformation and disinformation, and the ongoing integrity and assurance process of the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC).

We support the Voice as an enactment of the Uluru Statement of the Heart, and the proposed amendment to the Constitution of Australia. We submit that the proposed wording is appropriate and should be put to the Australian people in its current form.

Whilst this Inquiry is based on the wording of the proposed amendment, we observe that many submissions provided are more concerned with the concept of the Voice, laced with unfounded fears and scaremongering, akin to those upon the introduction of the Native Title Act 1993.[1] In our submission, we call on the Committee to consider such submissions in that light.

The New South Wales Council for Civil Liberties (NSWCCL) welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs in regard to The Criminal Code Amendment (Prohibition of Nazi Symbols) Bill 2023 (the Bill).

Freedom of expression does not give licence to individuals to engage in expression which engenders hate and incites violence. To that end, we support the principles underpinning the bill. However, the council believes it is the promotion of Nazi ideology which should be criminalised. To the extent that this Bill falls short of that objective, it is inadequate.  It seeks to criminalise only one aspect of the promotion of Nazi ideology – the display of Nazi symbols.  That does not go to the heart of the problem.  Careful consideration of how to prevent the promotion of Nazi ideology is required – the criminal law is only one of the required tools; other tools are required – education, engagement, diversion – and the criminalised conduct should be the core of the offensive conduct, not a superficial aspect.  

In a recent submission to a review of anti-discrimination laws, the Presbyterian Church of Australia argued for the right to exclude students from leadership positions, such as school captain, if they were having pre-marital sex or in a same-sex relationship arguing that "They would not be able to give appropriate Christian leadership in a Christian school which requires modelling Christian living", AAP reports. 

The NSW Council of Civil Liberties said the proposal seemed punitive and would have a chilling effect on student morale.

The UN has adopted a historic resolution that will make it easier to hold polluting countries legally accountable for their failure to act on the climate crisis. The resolution calls for the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to issue an official opinion that will clarify that obligations that nations have to tackle the climate crisis, and the consequences they should face for inaction.

As previously submitted, privacy is a fundamental human right that is central to the maintenance of democratic societies and achieving respect for human dignity. To this end, urgent reform is required to modernise the Act and ensure it is fit for purpose in the digital age, and the NSWCCL reiterates its previous submissions outlined in its response dated 9 January 2022 to the Attorney General’s Privacy Act Review Discussion Paper.

A meeting of the nation's various data and digital ministers resulted in the release of a communique on the 24th of February, asserting the urgency of implementing a national digital identification system which would make it easier for 'citizens to deal with the government', Paul Gregoire reports.

The 2014 Financial System Inquiry report found that many Australians are likely to object to a digital ID system due to privacy concerns, as it could be perceived as a digital version of the unpopular Australia Card initiative, which was rejected in 1987.

Organisers of the Sydney Royal Easter Show have clarified their stance on rap music being banned at this year’s event, claiming their intentions had been misconstrued upon the ban’s announcement.

Brock Gilmour – chief executive of the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW, said that rap music could in fact be played at the Easter Show, so long as it abides by the condition that it’s “quite pleasant and [does not contain] offensive language”. He also stressed that NSW Police had no part in establishing the ban, with the RAS having made that decision independently; the board’s president, Michael Millner, reportedly expressed support for it. 

Police and Easter Show organisers have attempted to walk back an apparent ban on rap music at this year’s carnival, characterising it as a crackdown on offensive language and aggression rather than an entire musical genre, SMH report. 

Drill, a darker and grittier subgenre of rap, has long been targetted by NSW Police, along with its Sydney practitioners. On Wednesday, however, Royal Agricultural Society of NSW chief executive Brock Gilmour said organisers, not police, took the decision to prohibit music that contained offensive language or “aggressive tones”. He said he did not want mums, dads and children hearing swear words at a family event.

NSW Council of Civil Liberties president Josh Pallas said it was an example of the over policing of marginalised communities. “In a way it’s thought-policing because rap music is just another instance of free expression,” he said.

In 2020, it was revealed that the NSW Police had been given a quota of more than 240,000 searches, including strip searches, during the 2019 financial year, ABC News Sam Nichols reports. 

The following year, they had additional quotas to issue almost 110,000 move-on directions and detect 305,000 crimes, despite a fall in crime rates across most categories between 2019 and 2021.

But by 2022, the police scrapped the controversial target-based strategy after facing heavy criticism from legal groups and civil libertarians.

Reforms in mandatory death penalty legislation could see reprieves for 1300 prisoners on death row. 

The Malaysian Parliament has approved a bill that would eradicate mandatory death penalty sentences for serious crimes. Currently, the death penalty is mandated for crimes such as murder, drug trafficking, treason, kidnapping, and acts of terror. The Courts, under this new Bill, would have the discretion of handing down sentences between 30-40 years, which would also replace natural life imprisonment. 

Australia’s Minister for Indigenous Australians, Linda Burney, declared that there was ‘nothing to be feared’ as she spoke alongside members of the Referendum Working Group and Referendum Engagement group after the constitutional alteration for the Indigenous Voice to parliament was announced by Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. 

If passed, the Voice to parliament will become enshrined within the Australian Constitution and formally recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First peoples of Australia.

Burney describes that the two critical points of consideration for the ‘yes’ vote, would be recognition and consultation, stating that this referendum was imperative for ‘completing our nation’s birth certificate’ and acknowledging that the life outcomes for First Nations people was ‘completely unacceptable’.