Castan Centre for Human Rights Law

Author: Sarah Joseph

  • Our Prime Minister’s Sri Lanka performance: a human rights disaster

    By Sarah Joseph AAP/Pau Osborne   Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s performance over human rights in Sri Lanka in the last week was an utter disaster. His statements seemed to brush aside some of the most fundamental human rights values: prohibitions on war crimes, crimes against humanity, and torture. Context Sri Lanka finished a decades-long civil…

  • The High Court – coming to a Centre Stage near you

    By Sarah Joseph In coming months, the High Court – the highest court in Australia and the final arbiter on the meaning of the Constitution – will decide several high-profile cases. These decisions, which may result in the striking down of legislation passed by parliaments across Australia, will reverberate both politically and socially throughout the…

  • Latest Case Law Trends: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights

    By Sarah Joseph The case law of the UN Human Rights Committee (HRC), which oversees the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights  (ICCPR) and hears individual complaints under the ICCPR’s first Optional Protocol, is always varied and dependent upon the cases submitted to it. Nevertheless, trends can be identified. Its earliest case law was dominated by allegations of…

  • Public servants and free speech

    Public servants and free speech By Sarah Joseph, Monash University Public servants have a political opinions, but do they have a right to freely express them on mediums such as Twitter? AAP/Dean Lewins On Monday, August 13, Canberra public servant Michaela Banerji lost a case in the Federal Circuit Court before Judge Neville, which has…

  • PNG plan: cruel to be … cruel

    The PNG solution: cruel to be … cruel By Sarah Joseph, Monash University While the government might not show humanity in asylum seeker policy, there is certainly a human side to it. EPA/Andra Subhan   Much of the criticism of the PNG solution has focused on apparent inadequacies in PNG laws, economy, and infrastructure in…

  • The Whitehaven hoax: ratbag act or legitimate protest?

    by Sarah Joseph The Whitehaven Hoax: Ratbag act or legitimate protest? Last Monday, 7 January, environmental activist Jonathan Moylan put out a fake press release purporting to convey a decision by the ANZ bank to withdraw its $1.2 billion loan to Whitehaven Coal for environmental reasons.  As a result, shares in Whitehaven plunged by $314…