Does Australia Need a Bill of Rights?
Does Australia need a Bill of Rights? After all, Australia is, it surprises many to learn, the only Western democracy with neither a constitutional nor legislated Bill of Rights. Various attempts over the years to legislate one have failed. The closest Australia ever got to a Constitutional free speech right was in 1992, when the High Court ruled that the...
The Case for Wisdom, Temperance, and Common Sense.
With all the chaos occurring within western democracies right now, I thought it timely to focus on solutions rather than the troubles we face. In the primer to this publication, it states that Liberty Itch will present ideas that will champion your rights as an individual, challenge concepts that threaten those freedoms, and warn you of impending coercion. My contribution, as...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Another Round of the Circus
Reproduced with permission from The BFD https://thebfd.co.nz/2024/04/16/another-round-of-the-circus/ Another day, another court case, and the scandal that just keeps on giving… keeps on giving. Justice Michael Lee has handed down his verdict in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation suit against Channel Ten and Lisa Wilkinson — and what a curious judgement it is. On the one hand, Lee states what has been obvious from...
None So Intolerant as the Tolerant
The Victorian Bar – you remember them – was a big advocate for the Yes side in the referendum. Fifty-seven per cent of the Victorian Bar considered the constitutional amendment ‘sound, appropriate, and compatible with Australia’s system of representative and responsible government’. Such ignorance could only come from a highly woke and politicised Bar. Fortunately, Victorians voted 54 per...
