Law Report

What are the unique challenges facing justice systems in the Pacific region?

In a wide-ranging interview, the outgoing High Court Chief Justice Susan Kiefel speaks to Damien Carrick about her unlikely journey to the top judicial job, women in the law, and her support for joint judgments.

What can Australia learn from the outcome of the Voice referendum? And Queensland's government has introduced legislation to make coercive control a standalone criminal offence. 

In the lead-up to the referendum vote, the Law Report discusses the constitutional implications of the proposal for an Indigenous Voice to parliament. Also in the program, could pill testing of illicit drugs save lives? 

What recommendations does the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability make in its final report to the federal government? And, in a legal first, a South Australian woman has been sent to jail for impersonating a registered health practitioner. 

For the first time in Australia, a patient who chose to undergo voluntary assisted dying has donated their organs for transplant. So, how did the strict legal and regulatory frameworks governing the processes in Victoria interact in this case?

The Law Report makes the law accessible.

A Voice to parliament could see Indigenous knowledge and holistic approaches used to help close the gap. We hear from Indigenous leaders with different views.

Can you sue your Judge? "Mr Stradford", a father of two, has been awarded $300,000 in damages in recognition of the significant distress he experienced after he was wrongfully jailed by Federal Circuit Court Judge Salvatore Vasta.

If you knew that something illegal, dangerous, negligent or corrupt was happening in your workplace – what would you do? Who would you turn to for advice?  A new report from the Human Rights Law Centre has found that there has not been a successful case brought by a whistleblower under the federal laws designed to protect employees speaking out about wrongdoing. They’ve now launched a new legal se...

In recent years, a number of jurisdictions around Australia have introduced Vulnerable Witness Intermediary Services. These services assist complainants such as children and those with intellectual and cognitive disabilities to give evidence in court or answer questions in police interviews.  While this service in Australia is currently only offered to complainants, the ACT will follow in the step...

Can grass roots community meetings help build support for the Indigenous Voice referendum in Far North Queensland? And the ACT government is considering charges over the unauthorised release of the inquiry report into the Lehrmann sexual assault prosecution. 

Think twice before you fire off that lighthearted emoji – there could be serious legal consequences. 

Hundreds of thousands of Australian residents, a figure now approaching one million, don't speak English well, or at all. The growing demand for interpreters and the shortfall in those who are suitably qualified to work in the legal sector is putting severe pressure on Australia's busiest courts. 

Lawyers in the Northern Territory say the shortage in Indigenous interpreters has become so critical that it's contributing to the vast over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people in the criminal justice system.

This episode revisits the historic Federal Court decision to confirm native title over more than 40,000 square kilometres of sea country in the Torres Strait region last year. For the first time the claim brought together Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians to achieve joint native title outcomes. Traditional singing provided crucial evidence in the proceedings. Damien Carrick travell...

The Robodebt royal commission has made damning findings about government ministers and public servants who created and administered the automated debt recovery scheme from Centrelink recipients. And why is the technology company that created ChatGPT being sued in US courts? 

The National Anti-Corruption Commission commences operation this week. And a New Zealand researcher investigates how jurors respond to evidence in sexual violence cases. (Warning: the conversation discusses sexual violence and child abuse)

When refugees arrive in Australia, they face huge challenges. So, how do they access the support they need? Perhaps counterintuitively, a newly launched children's book is designed to help refugees get legal assistance.

Why did it take the justice system 20 years to work out that Kathleen Folbigg was wrongly convicted over the deaths of her four infant children? Does Australia need a better way to investigate possible miscarriages of justice?

A New York Judge is considering what sanctions to impose on a lawyer who spectacularly misused ChatGPT. And Australia's only Indigenous federal judge Matthew Myers wants more First Nations people to use the family law courts to get the best outcome for their children.

A judge has thrown out the defamation action brought by Ben Roberts Smith one of Australia’s most decorated soldiers against three newspapers. The judge was satisfied, to the civil standard of the balance of probabilities, that allegations Mr Roberts-Smith was involved or complicit in unlawful killings in Afghanistan were substantially true.  Also, convicted serial killer Kathleen Folbigg has been...

The deepening crisis engulfing accounting giant PwC – is this a case of a few bad apples or is there a deeper structural problem? And the Victorian Law Reform Commission is proposing legislative changes to enable deaf and blind people to serve on juries.

When calculating a sentence, a judge weighs up many considerations, including remorse. But is it really possible to determine if an offender is genuinely sorry? 

In the race to decarbonise the economy, is there a risk of undermining the rights of Indigenous people? Mining companies Rio Tinto and BHP are proposing to develop north America’s largest copper mine on land considered sacred to the local Apache people.