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Keywords: High Court

  • INTERNATIONAL

    Offers of sanctuary brighten Australia's refugee dark age

    • Justin Glyn
    • 08 February 2016
    16 Comments

    Churches across Australia have made headlines by offering sanctuary to those who stand to be returned to Nauru following the High Court ruling, including 37 babies and a raped five-year-old whose attacker still resides there. In doing so, they have been rediscovering an old concept and reminding the government what refugee law was for in the first place. As in the Dark Ages, where the organs of the state are unable or unwilling to protect the vulnerable, it is the churches who are speaking out.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    No retrospective fix for traumatised refugees

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 05 February 2016
    6 Comments

    The practice of governments using the Parliament to change the law in order to win court cases is unfair, as only one party to a court case has the power to do this. The M68 case decided on Wednesday, which challenged the detention and transfer to Nauru of asylum seekers, was effectively won by the government because they changed the law retrospectively to make sure they would win. No retrospective fix will be possible for people who fled persecution only to face a punitive and hostile policy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    High Court not the answer to Nauru depravity

    • Frank Brennan
    • 04 February 2016
    24 Comments

    Following Wednesday's High Court decision, the moral depravity of Australian funded offshore detention of asylum seekers, including children, is to continue. There is no joy to be found in our High Court applying a Constitution even more bereft of human rights protections than that of Nauru. It's time for our politicians to address the political and moral question: what purpose is actually served by sending this mum and her baby back to Nauru, when the boats have already stopped and will stay stop?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Political donations reform is not so easy

    • Jack Maxwell
    • 29 July 2015
    5 Comments

    Political donations give privileged access to powerful public officials to those who are wealthy. But public funding does little to reduce parties’ reliance on private money and radical control measures can fall foul of the Constitution. A 2013 High Court judgment finding that a ban on donations infringed the constitutional freedom of political communication.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Asylum seeker Ali's successful day in court

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 13 February 2015
    23 Comments

    Former Immigration Minister's Scott Morrison's ruthless determination to prevent refugees arriving by boat from getting permanent residence has been successfully challenged. On Wednesday, the High Court ordered the current Immigration Minister to grant a permanent protection visa to a Pakistani Hazara 'S297'. Such an instruction is almost unheard of, as usually the Minister is asked to re-make the decision lawfully.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    High Court fails high seas detainees

    • Frank Brennan
    • 02 February 2015
    20 Comments

    The Abbott Government had a thumping big win in the High Court on Tuesday. All seven High Court judges have made it clear that there is next to nothing that can be done in the courts to question the government's approach. It is lawful, acceptable to government, and hardly a matter of concern to the Australian community, that 157 asylum seekers, including children, can be kept in windowless detention on an Australian vessel for a month on the high seas in the Indian Ocean.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    High noon for Government refugee policy

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 12 September 2014
    12 Comments

    There may not be simple solutions to complex issues such as how to reduce the risk of travel by boat without punishing the refugees. However, the High Court's latest decision reminds us there are people involved and they are not ‘outlaws’.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Australia supplying alleged refugee persecutors

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 11 July 2014
    6 Comments

    While Immigration Minister Scott Morrison sits with Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa and hands over customs vessels to the Sri Lankan Government for use in preventing people escaping Sri Lanka, Australia's High Court is deciding whether a group of 158 Sri Lankan asylum seekers can be returned to the Sri Lankan Government. How did we get to the stage where we are supplying the alleged persecutors with the means of stopping people from escaping and seeking our protection?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    High Court backs ministerial power over asylum seekers

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 20 June 2014
    6 Comments

    Over the last few years the High Court has made several decisions which found the Government wanting when making decisions regarding asylum seekers. Inevitably the cases are decided on the basis of whether a power was correctly applied or interpreted. Sometimes the results favoured asylum seekers, sometimes they upheld the position of the Government. A case this week in which the applicant lost may have significant consequences.

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  • RELIGION

    Church abuse crisis and the law

    • Carmel Ross
    • 14 March 2014
    23 Comments

    Reports from the Royal Commission this week have focused on the efforts of John Ellis to have his experience of sexual abuse as a teenage boy, perpetrated by a Catholic priest, acknowledged and adequately addressed by the Church. The finding by the High Court that Australian law as it stands does not allow an individual to sue the Catholic Church is an untenable situation if our nation believes justice for individuals is important.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    High Court leaves same sex marriage door ajar

    • Frank Brennan
    • 16 December 2013
    30 Comments

    Until now, there was some doubt whether the Parliament's constitutional power to make laws with respect to marriage would be broad enough to include laws with respect to same sex marriage. The High Court has put this matter beyond doubt with all six sitting judges affirming that 'marriage' for the purposes of defining the constitutional power of the Parliament could not be confined to marriage in the traditional Christian sense.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    High Court hedges bets on free speech

    • Patrick McCabe
    • 26 April 2013
    5 Comments

    In 2011 the US Supreme Court found it was not unlawful for members of Westboro Baptist Church to stage inflammatory protests at the funerals of US soldiers, whom the church believes are killed by God to demonstrate disapproval at tolerance of gay people. You might say 'only America', but recently something similar nearly happened here. 

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