On 16 February 2024 Greg Barnes SC delivered a keynote speech to the Queensland Branch of the Australian Lawyers Alliance Annual Conference analysing youth justice issues in Queensland, including: suspension of the Human Rights Act 2019 to allow detention of children who breach bail in the Stregthening Community Safety Act 2023 (Qld) – an Act...Read More

New Zealand’s top appellate court today ruled in favour of a very significant climate case continuing to trial. While it remains to be seen whether the case will ultimately succeed at trial, four features make it a momentous, landmark win for the climate that builds on other important wins globally in recent years. These four...Read More

Originally published in 1968 and re-published in 2022 to mark the centenary of the abolition of the death penalty in Queensland, The Penalty Is Death is an anthology concerning the capital punishment debate. The collection, divided into five parts, commences with two essays that provide comprehensive overviews of, and contemporarily contextualise, the debate for the modern...Read More

  When I started as a barrister, over 20 years ago, I typically worked late each night and weekends. A few years into my practice, I realised I hadn’t taken a holiday in over two years. There always seemed to be something urgent to prepare for, even over the long Christmas holidays. I got to...Read More

Australian citizens are at risk of being prosecuted under Australian law if they commit, or are complicit in crimes being perpetrated by the Israeli Defence Forces in Gaza.  Since the commencement of the Gaza war, when the Israeli government issued an order to 360,000 military reservists to engage in the onslaught of Gaza, multiple dual...Read More

  On 21 November 2023 Lawyers for Climate Justice Australia (L4CJA) held  a webinar on Senator David Pocock’s Bill, the Climate Change Amendment (Duty of Care and Intergenerational Climate Equity) Bill 2023. Senator Pocock was joined by Anjali (Anj) Sharma, who was the lead litigant in the groundbreaking case of Sharma v Minister for the...Read More

Matthew Brady KC of Higgins Chambers hosted a lunch in chambers this week for the Chief Justices of Queensland and Nauru.  Matthew sits as a part-time judge of the Supreme Court of Nauru.Read More

Everything You Need to Know about the Voice takes the need to know at face value and, without cynicism, has done an excellent job of answering everyone’s questions in a work that is a genuinely interesting piece of political science and history.Read More

Outline This workshop by the Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CLA) examined strategic climate litigation opportunities focusing on the Pacific, using a potential claim for damages by customary landowners in the Carteret Islands east of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, against Australia’s largest climate polluter, the operator of the Loy Yang A Power Station, as a practical case...Read More

The Lawyer X scandal is one of the most outrageous examples of the undermining of the rule of law in Australian legal history. What is at stake here is nothing short of confidence in the legal system in Victoria. The Victorian Attorney-General Jaclyn Symes must step up and ensure the integrity of justice in her...Read More