Reassessing Australian Judges’ Role in Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal (Part 2)
IntroductionIn the previous part, I discussed the historical background and recent political developments in Hong Kong that have raised concerns about the role of Australian judges in Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal. This part will examine specific cases involving Australian judges to assess their contributions and the extent to which they have challenged the infringement of human rights...
Reassessing Australian Judges’ Role in Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal (Part 1)
Historical BackgroundAs an Australian legal practitioner with Hong Kong roots, I am compelled to address a critical issue: the participation of retired Australian judges in Hong Kong's Court of Final Appeal. Historically, overseas judges were included in Hong Kong's judiciary to uphold judicial independence under the "One Country, Two Systems" principle established during the 1997 handover of Hong Kong from...
Why You Should Oppose the Government’s Attempt to Censor the Sydney Church Stabbing Video
If you have been following the issue of freedom of expression in Australia, you will be aware of the efforts of the government to censor the Sydney church stabbing video on X (but not mainstream media websites) via a court order. The court order has since been overturned although what will happen next is still uncertain. It is not unusual...
Hate income tax? You shouldn’t
Some taxes are more damaging than others. But when working out which taxes are more damaging than others, you should not judge a tax by its name. The impacts of income tax and GST can be much the same, because income tax and GST largely tax the same thing. So a special hatred for the idea of income tax relative to...
Victoria: Back in the Basket Again
Reproduced with permission from The BFD https://thebfd.co.nz/2024/05/09/victoria-back-in-the-basket-again/ I grew up in Victoria (don’t judge me, it wasn’t always the way it’s become), and lived through the dark days of the early 90s. Back then, it seemed that hardly a week went by without another economic calamity: the Pyramid building society collapse, the Tricontinental bank collapse, the State Bank of Victoria...
Mind Your Language
Everyone knows a suit is comprised of a jacket and a pair of pants. Two jackets are not a suit. Neither can two pairs of pants be called a suit. This was an argument I often made during the marriage debate. Marriage, I argued, was the joining of a man and woman in a special relationship. If two men or two...
AI Dystopia
Many voices are warning about the impending dangers of artificial intelligence (AI). They fear everything from mass unemployment to societal collapse, the destruction of humanity by ‘the singularity’, the malicious, sentient AI boogieman (boogie-robot?) from so many science fiction novels and films. It only takes a brief play with publicly available AI tools, such as Chat GPT, to understand the...
Raw Deal
A local rag (The Geelong Advertiser) reported* last month that some sort of strange secretive trade was taking place in the quiet backstreets of affluent Highton. The article heavily implied that this was an illegal distribution of ‘raw’ (unpasteurized) milk - a product that is banned for human consumption in Australia and banned entirely for sale in Victoria. I found...
Broken Systems and the Deteriorating Psyche of Our Nation.
Australia is on life support – politicians “and” the people are both to blame. Few people could deny that Australia is not well. The cost of living is unacceptably high. Home ownership is a long-lost dream. Our mental health is deteriorating rapidly. We are at war with one another over almost every issue. Polite debate has disappeared from our public discourse,...
Vic’s Very Naughty Boys in Blue
Reproduced with permission from The BFD https://thebfd.co.nz/2024/05/02/vics-very-naughty-boys-in-blue Why would anyone trust police in Victoria any more? Politicised, corrupt and hypocritical, VicPol’s reputation has been battered on all fronts over the past few years. It wasn’t just the naked brutality of the Covid era, when Victoria Police rolled out assault vehicles and locked down the skies, smashed old ladies into the roads, and...
