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Keywords: Gareth Evans

  • AUSTRALIA

    The High Court and the detention of asylum seekers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 04 December 2023
    8 Comments

    Last month, the High Court overturned a controversial 2004 decision, reaffirming the principle that asylum seekers cannot be detained indefinitely without prospects of deportation. This ruling not only corrects a historical misstep but also reasserts the High Court's commitment to limiting executive overreach.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    AUKUS: Mirage or reality?

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 28 March 2023
    8 Comments

    Australia's decision to partner with the US and the UK for the AUKUS pact has drawn scrutiny with questions looming about acquisition, construction and delivery of the nuclear-propelled submarines and a projected $368 billion outlay for up to eight vessels. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The Albanese reset: Stopping boats while treating onshore asylum seekers decently

    • Frank Brennan
    • 28 October 2022
    6 Comments

    In recent years, Australian policies in relation to asylum seekers and refugees have been unnecessarily mean, cruel and disorganised. The election of the Albanese government provides the opportunity for a reset, putting behind us the past mistakes of both Coalition and Labor Governments in the last 20 years.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Revisiting Iola Mathews' feminist battlegrounds

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 28 May 2019
    5 Comments

    To anyone pressing for social change after the recent election, the Hawke years must seem as far removed as Camelot. Iola Mathews describes the personal and political struggle involved in pressing for any reform. It is a timely book.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The origins and incoherence of Australia's asylum seeker policy

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 June 2017
    7 Comments

    I am resigned to the boats from Indonesia being stopped and staying stopped. But it is high time to stop the cruel treatment of the proven refugees on Nauru and Manus Island, and provide a permanent solution for the asylum seekers waiting inordinately in the Australian community. Their treatment is separable from the stopping of future boats setting out from Indonesia. The Commonwealth's $90 million settlement of the claim brought by asylum seekers on Manus Island should be a wake-up call to us all.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The man who sank the myth of controlled nuclear warfare

    • Binoy Kampmark
    • 18 October 2016
    2 Comments

    The late Professor Desmond Ball of the Australian National University's Strategic and Defence Studies Centre came as close as any on being a public intellectual on nuclear strategy. While some of his counterparts in the US felt that using nuclear weapons was feasible and sound, Ball issued his pieces with mighty caveats. 'Controlling escalation', Ball ventured, 'requires both adversaries to exercise restraint, and current US policy is to offer a ... mixture of self-interest and coercion.'

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Malcolm Fraser whacks lackey Australia

    • Barry Gittins and Jen Vuk
    • 16 May 2014
    2 Comments

    Fraser was a ruthless, conservative political animal who today is one of our most prominent human rights champions. The elder statesman is quite the angry young man in print. He delights in telegraphing his haymakers and following through with a well-placed elbow or two. Put bluntly, Fraser suggests we need to shed our lackey status. 'We need the United States for defence,' he argues, 'but we only need defence because of the United States.'

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Thailand tensions must rouse traumatised Coalition

    • Tony Kevin
    • 04 December 2013
    11 Comments

    We are witnessing a serious opposition-led threat to democratic process and respect for election results in Thailand. Possibly the Abbott Government is so traumatised as a result of its current tensions with Indonesia and China that it won't dare to open its mouth on Thailand. But this is a clear case where Australia should comment as a friend of Thailand and of its democratically elected government.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2012: If Clive Palmer was a High Court judge

    • Patrick McCabe
    • 11 January 2013
    2 Comments

    Imagine Attorney-General Nicola Roxon appoints Palmer as the newest High Court judge. Justice Palmer sets about rewriting the law in radical ways, freeing mining companies from regulation and approving disbanding the Australian Greens. Surely such an appointment could be challenged? Actually, no. Monday 21 May 

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  • RELIGION

    Mabo 20 years on

    • Frank Brennan
    • 29 October 2012

    'Though land rights and self-determination provide no utopia for the contemporary indigenous Australian community, they have belatedly put right an ancient wrong. The cost and inconvenience are unavoidable. Terra nullius is no longer an option.' Full text is from Fr Frank Brennan's keynote speech at the Central Queensland Law Association Conference, Mercure Capricorn Resort, Yeppoon, 27 October 2012.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    If Clive Palmer was a High Court judge

    • Patrick McCabe
    • 21 May 2012
    20 Comments

    Imagine Attorney-General Nicola Roxon appoints Palmer as the newest High Court judge. Justice Palmer sets about rewriting the law in radical ways, freeing mining companies from regulation and approving disbanding the Australian Greens. Surely such an appointment could be challenged? Actually, no.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Responsibility to Protect is not a license to intervene

    • Ben Coleridge
    • 29 March 2011
    2 Comments

    Many regard the 'Responsibility to Protect' as a doctrine which licences military intervention when civilians' lives are threatened by murderous governments. In fact, R2P emphasises the 'responsibility to prevent' as much as it does the responsibility to intervene.

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