Clive Palmer finds more charm in his coal than the Great Barrier Reef, which he plans to imperil through his exports.
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…
Ernst & Young's role in breaching the confidentiality of a former Indigenous employee at the behest of ACT Treasury must be scrutinised.
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…
Across the world the common factor in regional conflicts is inequality and no-one is immune to the consequences.
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…