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25.01.2022 Civil society groups, including Grata Fund, have continued to raise questions about conflicts of interest, a lack of transparency and weak governance structures regarding the national Covid-19 commission. Documents recently released have revealed that the manufacturing taskforce who recommended the gas expansion to 'help' drive Australia’s Covid-19 recovery was in fact receiving pro bono advice from a lobbyist firm with links to the Saudi government and gas companies.

25.01.2022 Reduced trust in Government following sexual assault scandals could result in fewer Australians willing to be vaccinated, ANU study reports.

23.01.2022 Check out this fantastic fundraiser for the Aboriginal Legal Service. Get your tickets quick!

23.01.2022 A 16-year-old transgender girl will be able to access gender-affirming hormone treatment following a landmark Family Court ruling. Justice Garry Watts said Imogen, "aged 16 years and 8 months", had "expressed a consistent, persistent and insistent view that she wishes to move to ... gender affirming hormone treatment". She had felt she was female from the age of six or seven, the court heard. Imogen's father consented to the treatment but her mother did not.... "We got the result last night and we had a bit of a cry," Imogen's father said on Friday, describing the decision as a relief.

23.01.2022 This year I have decided to keep my expectations around Christmas ‘real and achievable’. What I truly desire Christmas to be will not happen due to circumstances. I can make my Christmas the best possible with what I have available to me. Doolhof, Online forum Community Champion

22.01.2022 A Canberra mum has been served an eviction notice after ACT Housing refused to repair her home. She has been urging ACT Housing to repair her property after the conditions were deemed unliveable more than five years ago.

22.01.2022 64 heads of state and government have pledged to cut air pollution, eliminate ocean plastic and transition to more sustainable food systems by 2030 ahead of the UN Biodiversity Summit. However, the Morrison government has not signed the pledge.

22.01.2022 Auditor general Grant Hehir has written to Scott Morrison, noting that the Australian National Audit Office requires more funding to continue doing their job. Independent senator Rex Patrick expressed his concern in response, saying that he fears the government would quietly starve the audit office of funds after its reports caused great discomfort. The auditor general is one of the last bastions of frank and fearless analysis and advice within the public service, Patrick commented.

21.01.2022 Lawyers expect that a legal case challenging the Government's suspension of all flights from India will be filed in a matter of days. The travel ban has spurred outrage across Australia though the Government maintains their belief that the ban is legal.

21.01.2022 Tens of thousands of Australian students have taken part in protests and strikes for climate action in the past year. Many have been personally inspired into action in response to how the climate emergency has impacted their family members in such countries such as the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. "What that really bought home for me was the fact that natural disasters like that hurt communities like mine the most, they hurt communities in developing countries, they hurt marginalized communities, they hurt minorities." Danielle Villafana-Pore comments on the devastating effects of Typhoon Haiyan.

20.01.2022 Hundreds of people paid their respects to Ruth Bader Ginsberg at the US Supreme Court. The pioneering womn's rights advocate, who passed away this week, will become the first woman to lie in state in the US Capitol when her casket is placed in National Statuary Hall.

20.01.2022 Bandjalang people celebrate after a nearly three decades fight for native title in NSW.

19.01.2022 Your Saturday listen

18.01.2022 "The federal government is facing landmark class actions by 122 people who claim they were detained or prosecuted as adults for suspected people smuggling despite evidence they were children at the time." https://www.theguardian.com//australian-government-facing-

18.01.2022 Former NSW fire chief Greg Mullins says the wildfires ravaging the US are a 'direct reflection' of what happened in Australia last summer, and serve as another 'wake up call' to pay attention to climate change. 100 wildfires are burning across the US west coast, a devastating situation that is a direct reflection of Australia’s deadly bushfires in 2019-20. Former NSW fire chief Greg Mullins hopes that this serves as another 'wake up call' to climate change.

18.01.2022 The specialist Drug Court takes referrals from the Local and District courts of drug-dependent adults who plead guilty and enrols them in a 12-month program aimed at keeping them out of prison via health and social support. Professor Don Weatherburn, lead researcher on the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre and NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, commented that "the participation in the drug court program can have lasting positive effects on the lives of recidivist offenders and are a credit to all those involved."

17.01.2022 The Blueprint Institute has reported that the latest emissions projections released by the government indicate that Australia will not meet its 2030 target. The reports notes that the only way to permanently reduce carbon emissions was to reduce our economy’s structural reliance on them.

17.01.2022 Your Saturday read

17.01.2022 Another First Nations person has died in custody, marking the fifth Aboriginal death in custody in just over a month.

16.01.2022 A research paper published by Monash University associate professor Leanne Weber speaks to the 40 to 60 young people in the Dandenong region were classified as 'core youth network offenders' in Victorian police's secretive data collecting tool. Youths of Pacific Islander and Sudanese descent told Weber that police around Dandenong stopped them frequently without apparent reason in order to gather intelligence that could be fed back into this data tool.

16.01.2022 Wonderful news for renters of Ltyentye Apurte (Santa Teresa), the NT Supreme Court has accepted an amicus intervention the Australian Human Rights Commission. This means that the Commission will be able to share their expertise with the Court about the NT's human rights obligations and will argue that the Supreme Court got it right when they said the NT Government is obligated to provide 'humane' housing to its remote renters. the Australian Human Rights Commission https://www.abc.net.au//human-rights-commission-s/13010524

16.01.2022 And now, time for some good news

15.01.2022 Former foreign minister says it's a "bloody outrage" that Australian citizens must spend around $10,000 to return to their own country during the COVID-19 pandemic. I think it’s personally very outrageous to say you can come home if you can get on a plane, but there aren’t many flights and you have to go into quarantine and you have to pay for that."

15.01.2022 The Morrison government is being called to set up a new system of reparations to compensate the victims of alleged war crimes committed by Australian special forces. The big question at this stage is: what about the Afghans? What about the Afghan victims and their families? It is them that will be more shocked and will be more harmed, Hadi Marifat - the executive director of the Afghanistan Human Rights and Democracy Organisation - commented, It will be more shocking and traumatising for the victims and the Australian government has to think there has to be a remedy and a redress process and mechanism.

15.01.2022 TW: domestic violence Women's legal groups told the Senate's COVID-19 committee that they need 123 more lawyers and a $25 million funding boost to cope with the drastic increase in domestic violence. A survey of 15,000 Australian women found nearly one in 20 experienced physical or sexual violence from their current or former partner between March and May 2020. Two-thirds of these said it was the first time.

14.01.2022 You Sunday long read

14.01.2022 The federal government will be obliged to consult the Indigenous Voice to parliament when crafting laws on race, native title and racial discrimination which impact upon Aboriginal Australians. But the body will have no power to overturn policy or prevent laws coming into force, according to interim proposals. https://www.sbs.com.au//indigenous-voice-to-parliament-wil

14.01.2022 Your Saturday listen Journalists Lorena Allam and Calla Wahlquist look at what’s changed since Rio Tinto destroyed the 46 000 year old Indigenous heritage site Juukan Gorge

14.01.2022 According to data from the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, Scott Morrison’s office complied with legally imposed deadlines in just 7.5% of its 2019/2020 EOFY freedom of information requests. This is an extremely low rate of compliance with the statutory timeframe. Experts said the data showed the Morrison government's attitude of indifference to the FOI system.

13.01.2022 An analysis from the Centre for Public Integrity shows that the use of delegated legislation (the passing of laws by ministers or office holders rather than through parliament) has doubled in the past thirty years. This creates concern for the executive's concentration of power. Ministers are spending billions of dollars of public money without parliamentary oversight, Centre for Public Integrity chair Anthony Whealy comments, Their decisions affect the lives of millions of everyday Australians on everything from who is eligible for jobkeeper payments to what a $40bn fund is spent on.

13.01.2022 Another example of why a functioning FOI system is critically important to our democracy. This QLD FOI revealed Cmth Covid-19 recovery was receiving previously unknown pro bono advice from a lobby firm linked to Saudi government & gas companies.

12.01.2022 Witness and police expert testified that the police officer never took his knee off George Floyd's neck.

12.01.2022 In 2019/20 Grata had the great honour of working to support communities facing injustice and civil society to bring the sort of circuit-breaking litigation that is made possible when the eye-watering financial barriers to court are removed. Read about the impact that people like you have made possible in Grata Fund's Impact Report.

12.01.2022 Civil rights group disagree with the Victorian government's newest bill that insists upon the expansion of police powers in order to battle Covid-19.

12.01.2022 NSW police officer finally charged over alleged assault of a First Nations boy in Sydney. The charge came after footage surfaced last year of the officer tripping the 16-year-old and slamming his face into bricks.

12.01.2022 Morrison's government has announced their technology roadmap that claims to drive down Australia's emissions over the next ten years via five different priority technologies. Clean hydrogen, energy storage, low carbon steel and aluminium, carbon capture and soil carbon technologies have divided policy analysts due to their suspected propping up of fossil fuel energy sources. The government is backing yesterday's technologies and ignoring solar and wind which are our only chances of avoiding dangerous runaway global warming, Greens Leader Adam Bandt comments, This is a road map that will drive us off a cliff and young people will pay the price.

11.01.2022 Queensland police are grappling with the "concerning increase" in the number of officers accused of domestic violence. In 2020, there were 84 Queensland police officers listed as respondents to domestic violence protection orders.

11.01.2022 Some 'Positive News' to brighten your New Years Day

11.01.2022 More than 100 Muslim immigration detainees are being held in Brisbane after having been evacuated from Nauru and Papua New Guinea for medical reasons. The detainees have filed a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission saying they have not been given certified halal food for more than 12 months. We are doing enough injustice to them by locking them up without a crime for such a long period of time and if we can’t even provide them, meet their dietary requirements, it's a really horrible form of mental torture. commented Ali Kadri, spokesman for the Islamic Council of Queensland.

11.01.2022 Scientists from the University of New South Wales, the Australian Conservation Foundation, WWF-Australia and Humane Society International Australia have nominated the platypus for an official listing as 'vulnerable' under national environmental laws.

11.01.2022 The Australian Energy Market Commission has reported that electricity for consumers will be cheaper in 2023 as new generation capacity enters the power grid, including 1,667 megawatts of solar and 2,580 megawatts of wind.

10.01.2022 Yasir* is bravely challenging the Government’s unnecessary and brutal use of restraints which prevents people trapped in detention from accessing essential medical care. Yasir was abused as a child & tortured by authorities. He came to Australia to seek safety, now, trapped in detention, unnecessary handcuffing prevents his access to medical care. It’s so traumatic and brings back memories of torture by the authorities that he has seizures. We're proud to support Yasir to bring this landmark legal challenge with the support of his expert legal team at Public Interest Advocacy Centre.

09.01.2022 I can’t breath, the rooftop is burning and the smoke is coming in here, he said, claiming police had firearms and teargas. This place is not a good place, we’re traumatised here. https://www.theguardian.com//fresh-disturbance-at-christma

09.01.2022 Success for protest rights! In 2019 the Protect Country Alliance group involved about 20 people in a protest that was in opposition to the Northern Territory Government's decision to lift a moratorium on hydraulic fracturing. Two of the group's protesters, Lauren Mellor and Conrad Rory, who drilled holes into the lawns in front of NT Parliament House have been found not guilty of causing criminal damage

09.01.2022 "The foreign ministers of Australia, the United States, Britain and Canada have issued a joint statement expressing serious concern about the arrest of 55 democracy activists and supporters in Hong Kong last week." https://www.theguardian.com//hong-kong-security-law-being-

08.01.2022 Rio Tinto has fired its chief executive, Jean Sebastian Jacques, the head of iron ore Chris Salisbury and its corporate relations boss Simone Niven - suggesting a shift in the power balance within corporate Australia. Companies like Rio Tinto are being held to account by a new set of investors at the helm of superannuation funds who refuse to tolerate corporate excess.

07.01.2022 An audit has found that the Australian Electoral Commission is not checking that the information it receives is accurate and complete. This has ramifications in them then not disciplining political donors who break the rules. The audit also found that the Commission is still missing key records from seventy five donors.

07.01.2022 An inquest has found that the death of a 19 year old First Nations man in custody in NSW was "avoidable."

07.01.2022 Jenny Hocking speaks with SMH's Michael Ruffles about her inspirations, long legal battle and ultimate High Court victory.

06.01.2022 Your Saturday read Emeritus Professor Rhonda Sharp, Senior Research Fellow Monica Costa and Professor Siobhan Austen discuss the gender impacts of next week's Morrison government's budget.

06.01.2022 A First Nations teenager loses an appeal to have her trial heard by a female judge. A video of her strip search must be shown in court despite the young woman asking that men not view the video for cultural reasons.

05.01.2022 Senator McCarthy, a Yanyuwa woman, urged the government to support the flag motion. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags are also national flags, she said.

05.01.2022 TW: article contains photos and references to deceased First Nations persons The South Australian Department for Corrective Services has been ordered to apologise to the family of Wayne Fella Morrison who died in custody in 2016. Morrison's mother Caroline Andersen said an apology from the department was not enough but was the beginning of acknowledging that they had a duty to care for my son and that they did wrong to him. As a mum, I want to know why these guards are still working inside the prison system when there are so many unanswered questions.

03.01.2022 Introducing: Temporary "The stories of people seeking asylum are supposed to end. But in Australia, people who arrive by boat are seldom able to finish their story. Right now there are 30,000 people living in Australia who are being denied their right to protection. 30,000 people whose stories you haven’t yet heard. ... Temporary is a new eight-part narrative podcast from the UNSW Centre for Ideas and Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law. In this series we hear stories from those seeking asylum in this country. Those who are stuck in a new country with no support, separated from their families and the people they love. We learn about the system that is designed to keep these people in a state of permanent uncertainty. Listen to their voices, from a limbo of Australia’s own creation, and discover who they are and why the end of their story can’t yet be told." https://www.centreforideas.com/temporary

03.01.2022 On Sunday, Cricketer Mohammed Siraj reported verbal, allegedly racially motivated abuse that is still bing investigated by Cricket Australia. "The point is that year after year, decade after decade, in their interactions on the field and off it, far too many Australians have been unable to distinguish between national pride and the comfortable expression of abuse. Far too many feel the latter is an entitlement that comes with the price of admission." https://www.abc.net.au//alleged-abuse-mohammed-s/13046230

02.01.2022 "Full and unrestricted humanitarian access must be granted," the European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell commented, "This is not an EU demand this is international law." https://www.abc.net.au//un-says-tigray-hospitals/13045858

02.01.2022 An inquest hears that a First Nations man in Queensland was not properly assessed by paramedics when he was showing clear signs of cardiac arrest. "They just left him laying on the ground in handcuffs like a mongrel dog."

01.01.2022 A grand jury brought no charges against the Louisville police for the killing of Breonna Taylor. Prosecutors in Kentucky said the officers who fired their weapons at Taylor were justified in using force to protect themselves. The only charge brought by the grand jury was the three counts of wanton endangerment against the fired officer Brett Hankison for shooting into the homes of Taylor’s neighbors during the raid.... Lawyer Ben Crump said on behalf of Taylor’s family that the grand jury’s decision was outrageous and offensive.

01.01.2022 In celebration of NAIDOC week, Amelia Telford - a Bundjalung and South Sea Islander woman - speaks to her leadership in the fight for environmental and climate justice in Indigenous communities across Australia.