Stay up to date with the latest from the QCCL
Mr O’Gorman said that Minister Gerber needs to front the media to indicate what steps are going to be taken to address the highly critical QAO Report especially in relation to the crying need for an injection of funding to ensure prisoners can do rehabilitation programs in a timely manner so as to reduce the high rate of return to jail by prisoners and the ever increasing load on the taxpayer of a ballooning Qld jail population.
Read MoreIt is clear that the rules violate a fundamental protection for the right to a fair hearing: the legislation in question gives the product of this system a privileged status as evidence before the Court.
Read MoreI begin by saying that the Council is opposed to the use of live facial recognition technology in public places, whether they be publicly or privately owned. We are on the precipice of a completely different world, where our open societies are turned into systems of constant surveillance. The panopticon on steroids.
Read MoreFlag burning is not an issue at large in our country. Instead, the context it is currently documented in is a very narrow one – by First Nations people at Australia Day protests. Viewed in this context, the act of flag burning takes on immediate meaning. When an Indigenous person burns the flag, they say they do not believe that Britain should have colonised their land, that the nation of Australia exists as a colonial construct validated only by the invalid doctrine of terra nullius and the systematic oppression it effected. That is a specific political viewpoint that cannot be suppressed validly
Read MoreThe Queensland Council for Civil Liberties (QCCL) is very concerned that the Australian Government has not yet introduced into Parliament the abovementioned Bill despite the publication over 2 years ago by the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Human Rights of its report into its Inquiry into Australia's Human Rights Framework recommending that Australia enact a legislated federal Human Rights Act (HRA).
Read MoreOur position remains that it is safer to provide extremists with a peaceful outlet for their views and that the proper way to defeat those views is through debate and electoral politics, not criminal sanctions. While exposure to these views will undoubtedly cause distress to some members of the community, that is the price to be paid for living in a free society.
Read MoreThe assumption innate in the Bill is that allowing people to use deadly force to protect themselves and their dwelling will improve community safety and deter crime. However, outcomes of similar legislation in the USA show across the board that increasing legislative permissiveness of deadly force correlates with increased violent crime, unnecessary death, institutional racism, and no crime deterrence.
Read MoreThe Bondi beach terrorists, appear to have been hardline Islamists. Do we really imagine that had these phrases been censored, or all pro-Palestinian demonstrations banned, the Akrams would not have perpetrated their horror? To believe this is to refuse to take Islamist terror seriously.
Read More“Children, especially the teenagers that are the Bill’s primary subject, are to the relevant level capable of making their own decisions, and where a parent has not been proven to have incited or condoned a child’s misbehaviour, the child should be held responsible for it alone.”
Read MoreWe begin by noting what appears to be the irony of a conservative government introducing this type of legislation, since conservatives are usually associated with strong support for the rights of parents to choose how to bring up their children.
Read MoreModern policing apparently involves disrupting legal behaviour that makes people uncomfortable so the AFP told Parliament but in its letter to us it says something different…But surely we should believe what the AFP told Parliament?
Read MoreArguably, George Orwell’s most famous novel is ‘1984’. It is set in a dystopic future world ravaged by global and civil wars which is shroud in government surveillance. It is a fictional book. It should not be a play book for how the world might be today. It was a caution and one which we all ought to heed to.
Read MoreWhile move on orders could theoretically promote community safety, the flaws outlined above mean that, in practice, they promote a mere sense of it. In fact, the manner in which they are often issued leads to further harm, disproportionately made against marginalised groups, cementing adversarial relationships with the police, promoting intolerance and, ultimately, failing to address underlying social issues that lead to unfavourable conduct
Read MoreCitizenship is not a license that expires upon misbehaviour...The deprivation of citizenship is not a weapon the government may use to express its displeasure at a citizen's conduct however reprehensible that conduct may be.
Read More“ Criminalising chants with harsh jail terms in respect of the biggest public protest issue since Vietnam is up there with other excesses of the Bjelke -Petersen government, “ Mr. O’Gorman said.
Read MoreThe QCCL condemns the statement of the police minister Mr Purdie that “the hate speech laws would criminalise phrases that led to people being murdered at Bondi” as not only unsupported by any evidence but as tending to undermine the moral responsibility of the bigots who perpetrated the mass murder at Bondi.”
Read MoreCitizenship is not a license that expires upon misbehaviour. Could a citizen be deprived of her nationality for evading tax or murder? And one of the basic rights of a citizen is to return home,” says QCCL President Michael Cope
Read More
This Bill with its current poorly researched and consultation non existent background will inevitably have consequences in practice that have not even been apparently considered by the closed door policy formulation process
Read MoreThe fundamental principle of freedom of speech in Australia, the UK and the US is that “ causing offence “ is an inevitable result of maintaining freedom of speech principles and rights.
Read More
The Council has, at all times, been opposed to the disenfranchisement of prisoners. The concept of the civil dead no longer has any place in our law. Prisoners are human beings and ought to be treated with dignity. They are in prison as punishment not for punishment.
Read More
