While travelling the highways and byways of Queensland taking statements in support of my application to the United Nations alleging ongoing and systematic human rights violations against Australia’s Aboriginal and…
The criminal justice system consists of three main parts: (1) Legislative (create laws); (2) adjudication (courts); and (3) corrections (prisons, probation, parole, fines, community service). In a criminal justice system,…
Yesterday, Thursday I received a phone call from Captain Fred Martens, the man who spent a 1,000 days in jail, having been wrongly convicted of an offence under Australia’s Child…
Following on from the discussion of belonging and what the Australian flag represents to many Indigenous Australians, this post gives consideration to the current debate about acknowledgement of Australia's Aborigines…
Carl Schmitt’s Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty is both famous and obscure. A twentieth-century political theory, containing two canonical sentences: "Sovereign is he who decides on…
On 18 January 2012 the Solomon Star reported that RAMSI apologist and the former Solomon Islands Finance Minister and Member of Parliament for West New Georgia and Vona Vona, Peter…
Dear Creative_Canberran, Please forgive my tardiness in responding to your racist, defamatory and provocative insights into my research and writing abilities. No, your infantile rant on RiotAct has not escaped…
There is no question about racism being a profound form of ignorance, but when it becomes something that informs employment decisions by one of the world’s biggest accounting firms, Ernst…
The following article appeared in Friday’s Jakarta Post: Maj. Gen. Wisnu Bawatenaya has been appointed to become commander of the Indonesian Army Special Forces (Kopassus) replacing Maj. Gen. Lodewijk F…
The following is a modified version of an article which first appeared in the Fiji Sun on 12 September, 2011 and which Blak and Black has linked to since publishing…
“Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris” (Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.) I have long loved John Donne’s Meditation XVII; it remains pause for…
Callahan and colleagues (2002)[i] suggested that organizations must focus on three trust-building tactics – accountability, reliance, and aspiration – to cultivate helpful internal whistleblowing procedures. These principles provide people and…
It was pointed out to me last night that I had missed Mr Gary Lee-Rogers from my list of serving AFP/APS officers who have paid the ultimate sacrifice for insisting…
“A State cannot claim to be operating under the rule of law unless laws are administered fairly, rationally, predictably, consistently and impartially.” (Chief Justice Spigelman, as he then was, in…
I have borrowed the title from Michael Stolleis' oxymoronically titled book Justice within Injustice which is about, oxymoronically, justice in the Third Reich. After having read Stolleis' essays, in which…
In the 1960s Donald Horne observed, "Australia is a lucky country, run by second-rate people who share its luck." This observation was followed in the 1990s by Paul Keating when…
In 1896 J. B. Moore, with what turned out to be prophetic insight, drew attention to the possibility of the immigration laws of the United States being utilised for the…
The following is a letter I received from a reader of Blak and Black and the Fiji Sun, talking about his experiences as a Pakistani/Australian living in Australia’s Capital, Canberra: Dear…
Ah, Sam, you have really got up my nose. And given that smell contributes roughly seventy percent to taste, I can only say you’ve put me off my food! How…
In fact, the worst offender of institutionalised discrimination and marginalisation of Aboriginal people is the government.—Neil Gillespie, head of the Aboriginal Legal Rights Movement Inc, South Australia ('Poor health, racism…