Category Archives: Law (Australia)

High court strikes down Victoria’s electric vehicle tax in ruling that could threaten other state levies

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An array of state charges including waste levies could potentially be unlawful after court overturns 1974 precedent on consumption taxes

Victoria’s electric vehicle tax has been struck down by the high court in a landmark case likely to bar all state-level road user charges and expose other state levies to challenge.

On Wednesday, a majority of the high court ruled in favour of two electric car drivers who argued that the imposition of a tax by the Victorian government per kilometre ​driven was unconstitutional because the states do not have the power to impose such excise taxes on consumption.

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Australia will pay $27m compensation to Indonesians held in adult jails when they were children

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Commonwealth agrees to settle with more than 120 Indonesians wrongly detained as adult people smugglers, some when they were as young as 12

The Australian government has agreed to pay more than $27m to Indonesians who were wrongly detained or prosecuted as adult people smugglers while they were children using a deeply flawed wrist X-ray technique.

The commonwealth this week agreed to settle a class action brought by the Indonesians, some who were as young as 12 when they were locked up in adult prisons and prosecuted in adult courts as people smugglers between 2010 and 2012 during the highly charged political climate around border protection.

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Lotteries should not be exempt from credit card ban for online gambling, experts say

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Proposed laws provide carve out but financial counsellors say lottery products can cause ‘serious gambling harm’

Lottery companies should not be exempt from a ban on credit card use due to the harms they cause people with gambling addiction, according to financial counsellors, anti-gambling advocates and industry competitors.

The federal government has introduced legislation to ban credit card use for online wagering, citing high levels of community harm and people gambling with money they don’t have, but has proposed a carve out for lotteries.

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Australia’s system of indefinite immigration detention to face high court challenge

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Lawyers for stateless Rohingya refugee seek to overturn 20-year-old precedent that allows those who can’t be deported to be kept detained

Australia’s system of indefinite immigration detention is set to be challenged in a bid to overturn a 20-year-old high court precedent keeping hundreds of people who can’t be deported in detention.

Lawyers for NZYQ, the pseudonym of a stateless Rohingya refugee, have told the high court their client, aged 28 to 30, “may potentially be detained for life” unless it rules that people can only be held temporarily to facilitate their deportation.

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Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska asks court to render Australia’s sanctions regime invalid

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Billionaire is challenging sanctions over his alleged links to Vladimir Putin, describing them as ‘legally unreasonable’

A Russian oligarch sanctioned over his alleged links to Vladimir Putin has asked a court to render Australia’s sanctions regime invalid, documents show.

Australia imposed sanctions on billionaire Oleg Deripaska in March last year, a move that prevented him from travelling to Australia or profiting from his company’s stake in an alumina refinery in Gladstone, Queensland.

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Administrative Appeals Tribunal members will be forced to reapply for jobs after Labor stacking claims

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Mark Dreyfus promises ‘transparent’ process to recruit for new federal merits review body, which will review decisions on migration, the NDIS and Centrelink

Members of the soon-to-be-axed Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) will be asked to reapply for their jobs if they wish to continue on a new federal merits review body, after Labor complained the old tribunal was stacked with Liberal mates.

On Friday the attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, will open recruitment for the new Administrative Review Tribunal (ART), promising a “transparent and merit-based selection process for all members”.

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Commonwealth prosecutors received special training on how to run war crimes cases

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Documents show 21 prosecutors took part in legal program as CDPP ramped up preparedness in anticipation of referrals

Twenty-one prosecutors received specialised training on how to run war crimes cases in anticipation of referrals from the dedicated office investigating war crimes allegations, documents reveal.

Only one soldier has so far been charged for his alleged conduct in Afghanistan and the case has been slow to move through the courts, with his lawyers complaining of delays in receiving the evidence against their client.

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Court finds boy, 14, is too young to be held criminally responsible for death of Melbourne teen Declan Cutler

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Supreme court says there’s reasonable possibility the child, then aged 13, didn’t know his conduct was ‘seriously wrong’

A Victorian judge has ruled a boy, who was aged 13 when Melbourne teenager Declan Cutler was killed, is too young to be held criminally responsible for his murder.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, faced a judge-alone trial in July after he was identified as one of eight boys who attacked and killed 16-year-old Declan as he left a birthday party last year.

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Australia news live: NSW premier warns of ‘tough summer’ ahead; Ukraine war and weak dollar causing fuel price spike

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Chris Minns urges residents to have evacuation plans in place amid concerns of extreme heat during bushfire season. Follow the day’s news live

Labor looking to develop cybersecurity standards placing onus on companies after major data breaches

The federal government is looking at developing cybersecurity standards – a year on from the Optus data breach – to flip the onus towards companies and developers to keep Australians safe online, AAP reports.

If you’re buying a car seat for a new baby, you go into the store and buy a product off a shelf knowing that it will be safe for use - we don’t see the same thing with digital products.

What we want to do is move towards a world where citizens are not the ones who are having to think about and protect themselves from the cyber threat.

No, we won’t be doing that and nobody has suggested that we should.

I agree with Penny Sharp [the NSW minister for climate change] … she said publicly she doesn’t want to see Eraring stay open a day longer than it needs to or close a day earlier than it has to.

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Wife of ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle urges Anthony Albanese to stop prosecution

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Louise Beaston says their lives were shattered when her husband was charged after speaking out about the tax office’s pursuit of tax debts from small businesses

Richard Boyle’s wife has privately pleaded with the prime minister and attorney general to intervene and end his prosecution, describing the ordeal as a nightmare and an injustice that has shattered their lives.

Boyle spoke out internally, then to an independent watchdog and then to the media in 2018 about the Australian Taxation Office’s aggressive pursuit of tax debts from small businesses, which he said was destroying lives and causing unnecessary trauma to help the agency meet revenue goals.

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Flyer distributor charged with 2,400 breaches of Victoria’s child labour laws

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Ive Distribution allegedly hired more 400 children aged under 15 between July and September 2022

One of Australia’s largest catalogue distribution companies has been hit with more than 2,400 criminal charges for allegedly breaching Victorian child employment laws, by allegedly hiring youths aged under 15 without permits.

The state’s wage regulator, Wage Inspectorate Victoria, has filed the 2,425 criminal charges against Ive Distribution Pty Ltd in the Melbourne magistrates court.

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Activists want NT to make spit hoods illegal after report found they were used on children 27 times

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Campaigners says case of child who may have lost consciousness while restrained in spit hood highlights need to legislate ban

The sibling of an Aboriginal man who died after being placed in a spit hood while detained in South Australia has criticised the Northern Territory government for refusing to legislate a ban as recommended by the territory’s ombudsman.

Northern Territory police have used spit hoods on children at least 27 times since 2016, in a move labelled “extraordinary” by the NT ombudsman last week.

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Indigenous leaders dismiss Peter Dutton’s vow to hold recognition referendum if voice vote fails

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Opposition leader says constitutional recognition is ‘the right thing to do’ but Indigenous leader accuses him of ‘not listening’

Indigenous leaders have dismissed opposition leader Peter Dutton’s promise to hold another referendum on constitutional recognition if the voice vote fails and the Coalition win the next election.

Dutton told Sky News on Sunday that, if elected, his party would send Australians back to the ballot box to vote on constitutional recognition, instead of a voice to parliament, saying it is “the right thing to do” and that he supported “regional voices”.

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Queensland may face damages bill for unlawful detention of children in watch houses, lawyers say

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Dylan Voller’s solicitor argues new law retrospectively legalising practice could be successfully challenged

The Queensland government could still face a damages bill in the tens of millions of dollars, some lawyers say, despite retrospective legislation exempting it from liability for holding children in adult police watch houses.

Dylan Voller’s lawyer Peter O’Brien, the solicitor behind the class action against the Northern Territory’s Don Dale youth detention centre, said he believed the retrospective legislation could be challenged in court.

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Judge who falsely imprisoned man during property settlement faces second claim of wrongly jailing man

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Lawyers to push forward with action against Salvatore Vasta after federal court found he committed ‘serious and fundamental errors’ in separate Mr Stradford case

Lawyers for a second man who alleges he was falsely imprisoned by judge Salvatore Vasta say they will press forward with their case in the wake of a damning judgment denying him judicial immunity on Wednesday.

The federal court on Wednesday found in favour of a man, known only as “Mr Stradford”, who alleged he was falsely imprisoned by Vasta during a routine property settlement dispute in 2018.

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Australia’s federal whistleblowing laws have not protected anyone since inception, analysis shows

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Human Rights Law Centre says there has ‘not been a single successful case … brought by a whistleblower” under federal laws designed to protect those who speak out

Australia’s federal whistleblowing laws have not successfully protected a single person since their inception, an analysis of available court records suggests.

The Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) released a report on Tuesday examining 78 court rulings in 70 separate cases in which whistleblowers sought protection under federal and state whistleblowing regimes.

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Veronica Nelson’s family urges Victorian government to hear ‘cries for help’ and go further with bail reforms

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Exclusive: MPs urged to implement Poccum’s law, named in honour of First Nations woman who died in a cell while on remand

The family of First Nations woman Veronica Nelson has urged the Victorian government to “listen to [her] cries for help” and go further with its proposed changes to bail laws, which will be debated in parliament this week.

Nelson died alone in a Melbourne prison cell while on remand in January 2020 after her calls for help went unanswered. The 37-year-old Gunditjmara, Dja Dja Wurrung, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta woman had been arrested for shoplifting and refused bail before her death.

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Labor’s counter-terror laws may stifle ‘political dissent’, Law Council warns

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Journalists and civil liberty groups also concerned about proposed bill that creates new offences around accessing violent extremist material

Australia’s peak body for lawyers has joined civil liberty groups, journalists and advocacy groups to sound the alarm on proposed laws to criminalise the accessing of violent extremist material, saying the new powers are unnecessary and may inadvertently interfere with “legitimate matters of political dissent or struggle”.

The federal government is seeking to expand counter-terror powers by introducing new offences for possessing or controlling violent extremist material using a carriage service.

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Icac given power to use illegally obtained recordings in NSW corruption investigations

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State government grants new power to assist watchdog after request from chief commissioner John Hatzistergos

The New South Wales corruption watchdog has been granted the power to use in its investigations recordings that have been obtained illegally by third parties.

The state government on Wednesday gave the Independent Commission Against Corruption the new power to assist it with an ongoing investigation after a request from its chief commissioner, John Hatzistergos.

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Victorian recycling company found to have systematically underpaid refugees and asylum seekers

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Company formerly known as Polytrade fined more than $375,000 in the federal court

Refugees and asylum seekers employed to sort rubbish were systematically exploited and underpaid by one of the biggest recycling organisations in Victoria.

A recycling company formerly known as Polytrade, a linked subsidiary, and its owners, were fined more than $375,000 in the federal court this month, over what a judge described as “obnoxious conduct” and a “cavalier disregard” for the law, grossly underpaying migrant workers who spoke little English and were vulnerable to exploitation.

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