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The power of the State can be exercised capriciously and unaccountably when the “Don’t ask; don’t tell” approach to government is immune from parliamentary, judicial or public scrutiny. It is the task of lawyers to make it more difficult for politicians to take this approach.
The union movement in Australia has fought hard to protect Australians' rights to equal pay for equal work, without discrimination. However the Howard Government's Work Choices legislation seems to have undermined this.
In July 2002, Australia voted against a proposal to strengthen the 1984 UN Convention against Torture. John Howard's friendship with George W. Bush has compromised and tainted our once reputable record on human rights advocacy.
We think it is wrong for foreign states to impose the death penalty on Aussie drug traffickers and drug mules. But we apply different reasoning to non-Australians facing death at the hands of the state. The practical, hands on, Aussie approach often plays fast and loose with moral reasoning about what is right and wrong.
There are times when we Australians get the balance between national interest and individual liberty wrong, especially when the individual is a member of a powerless minority. One way of improving the balance is including the judiciary in the calculus, as has now happened in the United Kingdom and New Zealand.
Tackling the problem of terrorism by the application of force is unlikely to succeed. Pouring blood on the Iraqi desert produced an upsurge of terrorism where none had been before: cruelty, genocide even, but not terrorism, let alone fundamentalist terrorism.
Amnesty International has improved the lives of countless numbers of people wrongly imprisoned for their beliefs, or subjected to inhuman and degrading treatment. Now its decision to abandon its neutral stance on abortion could undermine the effectiveness in its main advocacy work.
Fatima Measham investigates the declining credibility of Filipino President Gloria Arroyo.
The last state authorised execution in Australia—that of Ronald Ryan—occurred 40 years ago last week. 12 year old Frank Brennan felt it was wrong. His adolescent moral sensibilities found resonance in public debate, law reform and policy change.
Once a corrupt military dictatorship, Indonesia is becoming a healthy democracy. Many Australians persist with pathetic stereotypes including the perception of Indonesian judges as monkeys.
Historians are fighting a mini war over frontier history and the number of Aboriginal dead. Tom Griffiths argues for a different approach.
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