Castan Centre for Human Rights Law

The Media is Offended by the new Discrimination Bill By Sarah Joseph, Monash University The media is right to be up in arms about proposed new laws. AAP Image/Alan Porritt The federal Attorney General has put forward a proposed new draft anti-discrimination bill. An enquiry into the Bill by the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs […]

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog. Here’s an excerpt: 4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 32,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 7 Film Festivals Click here to see the complete report.

by Sarah Joseph So this is a “storify”, basically a collated bunch of tweets from the night of 21/12 (not the end of the world as we know it) upon watching those war-loving men, elves, hobbits, orcs, wizards, goblins, trolls and dwarves in The Return of the King. Following is a discussion of the applicability […]

In defence of Alan Jones By Sarah Joseph, Monash University AAP Image/Warren Clarke So, Sydney shock-jock Alan Jones has disgraced himself with his appallingly tasteless and hurtful comment, recorded at a recent Sydney University Liberal club dinner, that the late John Gillard “died of shame” over his daughter Julia. He compounded the ignominy with his […]

By Sarah Joseph Mahmoud Ahmadinejad addressed the United Nations in support of anti-blasphemy laws. EPA/Justin Lane The meeting of world leaders at the United Nations has confirmed major faultlines over free speech. In the wake of the outrage prompted by The Innocence of Muslims, member States of the Organisation of Islamic Conference (“OIC”) are demanding […]

The responsibilities of social media companies over free speech By Sarah Joseph Protests, like this one in Pakistan, have spread over the Muslim world in response to an incendiary video depicting Muhammad that was posted on YouTube. EPA/Rahat Dar The global uproar over the YouTube trailer for Innocence of Muslims may have subsided, but the […]

We were very fortunate to host Tunisian blogger and anti-censorship activist Sami Ben Gharbia at our annual conference on 20 July this year.  Below are two videos of Mr Ben Gharbia, who is a founding Director of Global Voices Advocacy and Co-founder of the Tunisian award-winning collective blog nawaat.org. In this nine-minute Q&A video, shot […]

Sarah Joseph Gosh. In the last year the media has been dominated by … the media. We’ve had the furore over Andrew Bolt and racial vilification law, the Finkelstein inquiry (and, less prominently, the Convergence Review), and now ructions at our two main newspaper stables, especially Fairfax. Internationally, we have seen the fall from grace of News International in the UK, […]

by Sarah Joseph* Time Magazine has just announced its Person of the Year.  Appropriately, it is “The Protester”. The signature characteristic of 2011 has been the extraordinary outbreak of protests, demonstrations, riots, and even overthrows of government. Most obviously, there has been the “Arab Spring”. Two long-standing dictators, Ben-Ali and Mubarak, were, remarkably, overthrown in […]

By Adam Fletcher What is the point of a criminal justice system? This may seem to be a rhetorical question, but Australians are clearly divided over the answer. On 27 July this year, Victorian Attorney-General Robert Clark announced a survey in which “all Victorians are invited to have their say on sentencing.” The Attorney-General says […]