Category: Chris Nyst
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Politics, Technology

The Best And Worst

The 19th century French novelist Gustave Flaubert was a stickler for style. His scrupulous devotion to literary aesthetics and painstaking attention to detail meant every word of his prose was meticulously selected and perfectly positioned.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Privacy

So Far, So Good

The sad reality of the uncertain times in which we live is that any major public event will inevitably carry an increased security threat, and a corresponding call for heightened security protocols and broader police powers. In the case of the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games, the Queensland Parliament has answered that call by arming police with extraordinary and quite intrusive powers to stop, detain and search people and vehicles without warrant or even reasonable suspicion, use sniffer dogs, metal detectors, Backscatter x-ray vans and other investigative technologies, and randomly enter and search private property at will.
  • Chris Nyst, Commissions of Inquiry, Criminal Law, Politics

An Uncommon Commodity

Without doubt, self-preservation is the most powerful and compelling of all human instincts. The will to survive - physically, emotionally, financially – is acute and compelling, inextricably ingrained in our human condition.
  • Chris Nyst, Human Rights, Opinion

Celebrations

On the weekend our parks were full of Australia Day revellers. Most, I expect, were celebrating their deep affection and appreciation of their nation of birth or adoption, the great natural gifts of a lucky country and its lucky people, the pride and the delight of being part of an essentially liberal, inclusive, and egalitarian community of mateship and ‘fair dinkum’ Aussie values. I suspect few, if any, were there to remember and rejoice in the misery of the boatloads of wretched convicts who were transported in irons from their homeland to be cast upon the desolate shores of distant antipodes.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Entertainment, Technology

The Fame Game

Way back in 1968, Andrew Warhola, better known as the iconic American artist, director and film producer Andy Warhol, the celebrated pinup boy of the uber-cool 1960s visual art movement known as Pop Art, made what was to prove a profoundly prophetic statement. "In the future," Warhol proclaimed, "Everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes."
  • Chris Nyst, Christmas

Massive Feet

As usual, this week the big news is breaking first right here on the Nyst Legal blog. And it doesn't get much bigger than this. Australia may boast the beautiful Ballina’s big Big Prawn, Coffs Harbour’s iconic Big Banana, and our own sunny Woombye’s Big Pineapple, but when it comes to being the biggest, who else but those dirty rotten Yanks would try to outdo everyone at Christmas time? This week the thriving metropolis of Sedalia, in the heart of Pettis County, Missouri, unveiled perhaps its proudest achievement – a 177 feet tall red-and-white sock it hopes will officially become the world's biggest ever Christmas stocking. City leaders proudly announced this wonder weighs a whopping 372 kilos, is 22 metres wide, and about 2 metres longer than its relatively puny predecessor in the Italian city of Carrara. Who knew anyone in Italy would have time to knit a 50 metre sock?
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion

Twentieth Century Hero

The 1953 Morris Minor utility was small by any standard. Its cabin was barely big enough for one mum and one dad, so all the kids got bundled into the back. It was right there in the back of the old ute, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with my two big brothers on the rattling metal tray, that I first heard the awful news. Shortly after noon, US-time, on 22 November 1963, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the 35th President of the United States of America, was shot down on the streets of Dallas, Texas. Even as a little kid, when my parents pulled up to the roadside to solemnly report what they had just heard on the radio, I understood immediately from the shock and sadness in my mother’s voice the world had changed forever. Fifty-four years later, who doesn’t still remember that terrible day?
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law

Intoxicated People

This week I learned some stuff about intoxicated people. Given the popular national penchant for a cold beer on a hot day, perhaps it’s unsurprising that it happened on a trip to the sweltering tropics. The whole saga started more than a year ago when the Liquor and Gaming regulators decided to raid a Far North Queensland pub to make sure everyone up there was conducting themselves with all appropriate decorum and discretion. As it turned out, they concluded to their shock and horror that they weren’t.
  • Chris Nyst, International, Opinion, Politics

The Man In The Arena

When I first started doing trial work as a young lawyer I was constantly surprised and intrigued by the persistent inconsistency between different eyewitness accounts of the exact same incident. Particularly when dealing with a violent or otherwise shocking event, such as a car crash or a brutal street brawl, no two witnesses seemed to remember the same event in the same way. For a defence lawyer it was the welcome stuff of reasonable doubt, but I soon learned it was also just a fact of life. When people are confronted by emergent and traumatic circumstances, their brains can only take in so much detail, and the fact two witnesses remember one event in completely different ways doesn't necessarily mean either one is telling fibs. Quite the contrary.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Dispute Resolution, International, Technology

Judgement Day

The other night I had the craziest dream. Remember Haley Joel Osment? He's that cute-but-oh-so-creepy little weird kid with the Sad Sack face who kept seeing dead people in M. Night Shymalan’s 1999 supernatural horror-movie The Sixth Sense. If you were as spooked as I definitely was by that things-that-go-bump-in-the-night ghost story, you won’t have forgotten this kid in a hurry. But then, as if The Sixth Sense wasn't quite spooky enough, in 2001 he backed it up with a dark and contemplative tale called AI Artificial Intelligence, which was even more disturbing. This time he played – surprise, surprise – another cute, creepy little weird kid, only with a slight and distinctly unsettling difference. He’s a robot.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Opinion

Redemption Road

There is no more powerful human narrative than the story of redemption, the assurance that no matter what evil we have done we can atone, strive to be better and ultimately find forgiveness. Not everyone believes in true redemption. But, like the good preacher, a good lawyer has to believe we all can hope to one day be delivered from our sins.
  • Chris Nyst, International, Opinion, Sport

How Sweet It Is

As a longtime lover of the ‘Sweet Science’, I felt a secret sense of satisfaction in watching the measured way in which Floyd “Money" Mayweather defeated the game and garrulous UFC world champion Conor McGregor on the weekend, with an emphatic TKO in the 10th round of their scheduled 12-round bout in Las Vegas Nevada.