Human Rights

The Albanese government has started a public consultation after ditching provisions from sex harassment legislation which would have forced parties to bear their own costs in discrimination litigation, noting that lawyers favour an ‘equal access’ costs model.

An anti-lockdown protester has lost her appeal of a decision dismissing her legal challenge to Victoria’s stay-at-home orders, with an appeals court finding the reduction in risk to public health “outweighed” impacts on freedom of speech.

The Western Australia government has foreshadowed a strike-out application just one month after being hit with a class action on behalf of detainees in the state’s detention centres.

Editors and journalists from Australia’s largest news organisations have protested recent changes to the Federal Court Rules that restrict the public’s access to documents filed with the court, calling it a “full-frontal assault” on open justice. 

The Western Australian government has won its bid to strike out a class action that seeks damages for alleged discrimination against First Nations Australians detained for unpaid fines.

The Northern Territory public housing authority has been hit with a class action alleging it failed to maintain public housing to a habitable standard in remote Aboriginal communities.

A court has rejected the plans of a Clive Palmer-owned mining company to dig a coalmine in central Queensland, finding the mine would infringe on the human rights of First Nations people and future generations of Queenslanders, and contribute to “foreseeable and preventable life terminating harm”.

A group of Jewish and Israeli former students who have accused a Victorian high school of allowing racially-charged bullying have defeated a bid by the state government to adjourn evidence at trial after its silk was diagnosed with COVID-19. 

The Albanese government has removed provisions from sex harassment legislation that passed the senate on Friday which would have forced parties to bear their own costs in harassment litigation, after dozens of lawyers expressed “deep concern”.

Sydney advisory and accounting firm Bentleys has been hit with a lawsuit by a former HR adviser alleging sexual assault, harassment and “exhibitionist and shocking behaviour” by a senior executive which left her with post-traumatic stress disorder.