Law & Crime

For those returning to work in 2023, and for those entering an office for the first time, an epic change is afoot, one that will make Australian workplaces safer. The specific change to the law advocated for in the Respect @ Work report will put the onus and burden on the employer to take action to eliminate sexual harassment from the workplace.

These have been an extraordinary five years. In that time, we have seen a new wave of discussion and debate about women’s safety, equity and right to respect in the workplace, the family and at large. We need to celebrate the big wins – the adoption of so many of Kate Jenkins’ key Respect@Work recommendations, for example, with better support for childcare and longer paid parental leave. But there is still work to do to bridge the gender pay gap, and to make women safer outside work, particularly in the domestic setting.

It is difficult to conceive of a set of government decisions purportedly aimed at protecting Australia’s national interests that have been more comprehensively destructive of them than those made by successive Coalition governments in the Timor-Leste case.

Thirty years ago this week, something extraordinary happened. In two judgements issued on the same day by the High Court, a central democratic principle – the implied freedom of political communication – was explicitly recognised for the first time. 

In early May, the High Court delivered a judgement that further undermines the fragile patchwork quilt of anti-discrimination law in Australia. You might have missed it – Citta Hobart v Cawthorn received little attention with all eyes on the federal election. But pensioner David Cawthorn’s case highlights the increasing challenges facing those who experience discrimination in its many forms and wish to seek legal redress.

Four years. Four million taxpayer dollars. More than a dozen judgements. Days and days in court – often in closed court, with the media and public barred from attending. On Thursday, it was finally over. The prosecution of Bernard Collaery came to an end.

Under the current New South Wales law, a person commits sexual assault if they know the other person is not consenting, if they are ‘reckless’ as to whether the other person consented, or if there are no reasonable grounds for believing there was consent. According to the court, my frozen body was all the consent that was needed.

Back in 1997, when Crown casino opened its massive Southbank ‘entertainment centre’, I was possibly its best-known public critic. It was a time for compulsory cheering after Crown’s lavish opening, but I was disturbed. I said it is too big and too powerful, with so much money flowing that politicians and media will not even know when they have been bought. This memory was triggered as I read the findings of the Finkelstein Royal Commission into the Casino Operator and Licence.

It was a Saturday when I found out Kate was gone. I was about to pick up the phone to call her, because I had not heard from her during the week … I knew something was wrong, but my mind tried to minimise the weight of any worry. Kate was and will always be the strongest woman I know.

Scott Morrison has an answer for everything and a solution for nothing. Like the neoliberalism of which his party was once so proud, he is all promise and no delivery. His press conferences have long been a masterclass in dictating the terms of debates, dodging accountability and delivering attacks on his rivals.