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  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Politics

Cedric Hampson, One Of God’s Own Gentlemen. RIP

When I received a call last night to hear my old friend and mentor Cedric Hampson QC had passed away at his home over the weekend I was left with a deep sense of sadness. Cedric was not only a great intellect, and a very fine lawyer, but he really was one of God’s own gentlemen. A published novelist and lover of the arts, the former rugby player, Rhodes Scholar and President of the Queensland Bar Association was a man for all seasons, equally at home dissecting thorny legal issues before the Court of Appeal as he was sipping red wine and chatting idly about our common interest in movies, music and the arts. Over the years  Cedric and I worked closely together on many cases, including the successful appeal of former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, and he was  always an inspiration. He was rightly recognised as without peer in the Queensland legal profession for generations. Above all he was just a lovely man – always courteous, avuncular and generous of spirit - and he will be sorely missed.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Human Rights, Opinion

Need For Restraint

Earlier this week I was sitting in the public gallery of a Magistrates Court on the Sunshine Coast waiting for my client's matter to be called before the magistrate, when a downcast defendant was led into the dock with both hands locked together in a pair of impressive-looking wrist restraints. The police prosecutor proceeded to launch into a dissertation on the defendant's misdemeanours, when the Magistrate abruptly interrupted.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion

Breaking The Cycle

Violence begets violence. We’ve all become accustomed to television images of US police responding to even the most apparently minor civil disturbance with guns drawn and pointed, barking orders at suspects and bystanders alike, taking no prisoners and no chances whatsoever, because somebody, anybody, could suddenly turn violent and put them in a life-threatening situation. And it’s true, they could. But what came first, the chicken or the egg? Is America an armed society because everyone is armed to the back teeth, or is everyone in America armed to the back teeth because they live in an armed society? Do American police adopt their ‘shoot on sight’ approach because every suspect is lethally dangerous, or is the lethal danger at least in part a product of police willingness to ‘shoot on sight’?
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Human Rights, Opinion

Heaven Forbid, Maybe Even You And Me

Last week I was invited by Amnesty International to join a panel of criminal justice experts discussing the human rights implications of Queensland's anti-bikie laws, indefinite detention regime, and other current and mooted legislative changes challenging many of our accepted notions of personal liberty. The discussion, which took place in the Banco Court of Brisbane's new Supreme Court complex, and involved a broad spectrum of speakers ranging from the Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart to legal academics and practitioners, was introduced by the President of the Queensland Court of Appeal Justice Margaret McMurdo, who spoke powerfully of the need for lawyers to find a voice in championing human rights both here and internationally.
  • Chris Nyst, Commercial Law, Opinion

Animal Rights, Or Just Plain Monkey Business?

As a novelist and film-maker, and advisor to a singer-songwriter son heavily involved in the music industry here in Australia as well as internationally, copyright is a subject near and dear to my heart. I’ve learned from bitter experience that the golden rule for any creative is ‘hold on to copyright as long as you can’. When I wrote my first film script I found the first thing most producers wanted me to do was assign them copyright in the script, and managers and music labels signing up aspiring rock stars are always looking to slip into their agreements clauses giving them a healthy piece of any copyright action that’s on offer. That’s because when it comes to the business of the arts, copyright means control.
  • Chris Nyst, Hollywood, Opinion

Back To The Future – Southport Named The ‘New’ CBD

It's great to see Southport officially recognised by the State Government as the Gold Coast's ‘new’ CBD. What a great story. It's got everything but Marty McFly. In Robert Zemeckis’s classic 1985 sci-fi comedy Back to the Future teenager Marty McFly (Michael J Fox) is sent back in time in a DeLorean sports car time-machine to re-visit his sleepy mid-west home town in 1955. In the early 1980s when I opened a law firm with my old mate Johnny Witheriff, I wasn’t quite driving a DeLorean, but my 1963 Wolsley 6 was almost as plush, and back then in the future Southport was already the ‘big smoke’ of the Gold Coast.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Politics, Property

Why Higher Residential Density Makes Sound Socio-Economic Sense

Picture: Dmitry Osipenko Established in 2008, the Grattan Institute is a Melbourne-based public policy think tank which focuses on the key policy areas of Cities, Energy, Health, Schools Education, Higher Education and Productivity. With the help of funding from the Australian Federal Government, the State Government of Victoria, the University of Melbourne and BHP Billiton, it draws on research and expertise drawn from a broad range of fields to formulate high quality evidence-based public policy for Australia’s future. In its most recent report the Institute argues that for both social and economic reasons we have to find ways either to enable our workers to live closer to Australia's CBDs, or to reach them more quickly and effectively by road and public transport. The report is posted on the internet, and is worth a read.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law

Bugging Coffins?! Has It Really Come To This?

Picture: Rhodi Lopez Source: Unsplash Years ago I was involved in a major Australian Federal Police investigation into a high-profile union administrator (amongst others) in which the AFP bugged the homes of a host of dodgy characters all the way from Cairns to Coolangatta. In the process they came up with a mountain of secret tape recordings of sometimes very private communications between all and sundry. The listening devices secreted in the homes of those under investigation included a bug in the main bedroom of a home where one suspect and his wife shared their matrimonial bed. The resultant tape recordings included audio of some goings-on that were so sensitive the tapes ultimately never saw the light of day. But they made some people stop and rethink whether the ends always justify the means, or should there be some careful circumscription of some of our more police intrusive investigation tools.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, International

When Are Young Cops Going To Be Taught Choker Holds Are Lethal?

About 20 years ago I acted for a young police officer who was charged with assault occasioning grievous bodily harm after he applied a particularly vigorous choker hold in arresting a recalcitrant drink driver. Following his police training to the letter, my client locked his arm around the man's neck and pulled it tight enough to restrict the offender’s blood flow to his brain, causing temporary loss of consciousness, a very effective way of incapacitating anybody. Unfortunately, he also managed to pop one of the man's eyes out of its socket, and cause further unintended but significant damage.
  • Chris Nyst, Family Law, Technology

Stay Off Social Media And Out Of The Family Court?

Over the past several years anecdotal experience in the our family law practice has had some at Nyst Legal raising their eyebrows about the number of more mature couples lining up for the divorce, often after striking up new relationships over the Internet. Now it's official, with statistics showing that there is a growing in divorces involving couples in the over-55 age bracket. Australian Bureau of Statistics figures now show that the divorce rate is up 2% since 2011, with 49,917 Australian’s splitting in 2012, and experts are laying the cause partly at the feet of the explosion in social networking sites. Sounds like some people may be fudging their online profiles way too much.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Opinion, Sport

Brother For Brother

We choose our friends. We don’t choose our family. But family is family, for better or for worse. Mostly we love them, at times they drive us to distraction. They embarrass us, and we embarrass them. But as life pitches up its cruel and crazy curveballs, family is a constant.
  • Chris Nyst, Hollywood, Opinion, Technology

Watch Phones Taking Us Back To The Future

Picture: Lloyd Dirks Source: Unsplash When I was a kid every afternoon after school my brothers and I used to love watching The Dick Tracy Show on T.V. Detective Dickie would hurtle through the city streets in his police squad car barking into his radio wristwatch "Dick Tracy calling Go-Go Gomez, Dick Tracy calling Go-Go Gomez. Come in Go Go.” It was pretty gripping stuff. And very futuristic. A telephone attached to your wrist?! Who figured that would ever happen? Now we read that by 2018 five per cent of all smartphones will be paired with a Dick Tracy-type device. Crazy.

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