Eureka Street

Keywords: Solicitor

AUSTRALIA

Tom Hughes, legend of Australian politics and law, farewelled
- Peter Craven
- 05 December 2024
Tom Hughes, who passed away at 101, was a towering figure in Australia’s legal and political history. A barrister of dazzling skill, an Attorney-General with a penchant for reform, and a man of unshakable conviction, Hughes combined wit, charm, and grit to shape justice and inspire a legacy beyond party lines.
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AUSTRALIA

Did lawyers fail to stand on principle?
- Frank Brennan
- 20 August 2024
6 Comments
In the aftermath of the failed Voice referendum, questions arise about the legal profession’s role in public discourse. Was this a missed opportunity for legal experts to provide critical analysis and guidance on such a significant constitutional matter?
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AUSTRALIA

Best of 2023: How Australia's asylum seeker policy has evolved over thirty years
- Kerry Murphy
- 04 January 2024
Throughout recent decades of Australian history, the stance every government has taken on asylum seekers has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge.
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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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AUSTRALIA

Three steps back and one step forward: Three decades of asylum seekers in Australia
- Kerry Murphy
- 28 July 2023
How has Australia's asylum seeker policy changed over the past thirty years? The approach of every government has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge.
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AUSTRALIA

The Morrison shadow government and the romantics of convention
- Binoy Kampmark
- 01 September 2022
8 Comments
The most striking note in the tempestuous outrage regarding Scott Morrison’s self-appointment (technically, appointment with the Governor-General’s approval) to five ministerial portfolios other than his own, is the search for the illegal. Such a search is fruitless in a system that thrives on the principle of convention, perennially uncodified and therefore susceptible to breach.
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ARTS AND CULTURE

The gifts of our limitations
- Stephanie Kate Judd
- 05 October 2021
6 Comments
When I was a teenager, something glitched in my brain and central nervous system and my hand stopped working. Over the course of a year, I went from playing in orchestras to being unable to hold a pencil; from being in the top team of every sport I played to being unable to throw a ball. I’d baffled the world’s top neurologists and exhausted every avenue of medical testing.
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AUSTRALIA

Prison time for perpetrators but justice eludes victim of modern slavery in Australia
- Rebecca Dominguez
- 02 August 2021
4 Comments
Last month, a man and a woman were sentenced to between six and eight years in jail for intentionally possessing and exercising the right of ownership over a slave between 2007 and 2015 in Mount Waverley, Victoria. After arriving in Australia from the Tamil Nadu province in India on a 30-day tourist visa, the woman’s passport was taken from her and she was forced to cook, clean and care for the couple’s three children on an average $3 per day.
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AUSTRALIA

The High Court’s surrender to the Morrison-Dutton immigration detention regime
- Frank Brennan
- 24 June 2021
11 Comments
Who’d have thought that during Refugee Week, Australia’s highest court would endorse the Parliament’s view that our non-refoulement obligations under the Refugee Convention and the Convention Against Torture were now an irrelevance.
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AUSTRALIA

Rule of lucre
- Martin Pike
- 01 June 2021
13 Comments
The fact is that money still buys a better service from the legal system, and to claim otherwise is to throw out the most basic principles of an economy. After all, if there were no benefit to be gained from backing up a truck full of money and tipping 30 or 40 grand a day into a team of silks, junior barristers and top tier solicitors, why would those with the means do it? To argue the contrary beggars belief. And if the observation is accepted, what does that tell us about the rule of law?
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AUSTRALIA

Disability RC hears how criminal justice system fails people with disabilities
- Justin Glyn
- 02 March 2021
Hearing 11 of the Commission has looked at how Australia’s justice system treats people with disabilities. The intersection between disability and the criminal justice system is, unfortunately, not a happy one.
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AUSTRALIA

We're not all in this together, yet
- David Manne and Laura John
- 18 June 2020
5 Comments
This Refugee Week, many asylum seekers and refugees are struggling to survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Some are trapped in immigration detention centres across the country in cramped and overcrowded conditions that make physical distancing impossible. Others are living in our community on temporary visas or no visas at all, struggling to make ends meet.
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Keywords: Solicitor