Category: Politics
  • 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, 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, 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.
  • Human Rights, Jonathan Nyst, Opinion, Politics

The Great Dissenter

“I am the result of a loving upbringing in a peaceful country, with wonderful parents and siblings, a very long-term relationship, stability, support – but a feeling that life isn't always just and that there is injustice for people and we should do something about it.”
  • Chris Nyst, Commissions of Inquiry, Criminal Law, Litigation, Politics

The Rule Of Law

In a time of increasingly vigorous criticism of some of our court processes, many were taken aback when Victoria’s Supreme Court recently hit back at its detractors, carpeting three politicians, a journalist and a newspaper editor, over public statements criticising the sentencing of terror offenders. A couple of months ago three ministers of the Turnbull government, – Greg Hunt, Alan Tudge and Michael Sukkar – publicly slammed Victorian judges for what they characterised as inappropriate leniency and “ideological experiments” in sentencing terrorists, Mr Sukkar asserting the judges’ approach “has eroded any trust that remained in our legal system.”
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Opinion, Politics

Parole On Trial

The Prime Minister’s call for an overhaul of state parole laws in the wake of this week's terrorist attack in Melbourne has the sniff of political scapegoating.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Human Rights, Opinion, Politics

Fixated Folk

This week I learned something kind of crazy that I never knew before.A gentleman came to my office complaining that five police officers had recently materialised at his front door, without warning or invitation, wanting to conduct a psychiatric assessment on him. It all sounded more than a little bit bizarre to me but, since the gentleman appeared otherwise quite lucid, I tried to dig a little deeper, in the hope of understanding what it may be all about. He didn't really know. The best he could tell me was the officers concerned were apparently attached to something called the Fixated Persons Unit. 
  • Chris Nyst, International, Migration, Politics

A Small, Small World

On June 28, 1963, the then-President of the United States of America, the late great John Fitzgerald Kennedy, addressed a joint session of the Oireachtas Eireann, the national parliament of Ireland, in Dublin. He spoke not only as the world’s most powerful political leader of his era, but as the proud descendant of an impoverished Irish emigrant family.
  • Criminal Law, Politics

True Believers – Legalising Medicinal Cannabis In Australia, The Debate Rages On

“Cannabis sativa is the greatest wonder-drug ever known to man.” The grizzled, weather-beaten face of the aging hippie who sat across the narrow interview desk from me, in the close, stifling confines of the remand prison interview room, was stretched into a wide-eyed look of wonderment. “The Hindu Vedas sang about its powers in the Atharva Veda 1500 years before the birth of Christ. The Hindus called it ‘the food of the gods.’” I took a reassuring glance in the direction of the panic button on the wall. It was comfortably within my reach.
  • Chris Nyst, Commissions of Inquiry, Criminal Law, Politics

More Robust Times

For many the recent retrospective by Brisbane’s Courier Mail newspaper, celebrating the 30 year anniversary of the game-changing Fitzgerald Commission of Inquiry into Police Corruption in Queensland, will have brought back memories of more robust times. Between 1987 and 1989 the inquiry, presided over by Tony Fitzgerald, then a razor-sharp and highly regarded Brisbane barrister, systematically uncovered and dismantled an entrenched culture of police corruption that led all the way to the top.
  • Chris Nyst, Politics, Privacy

Welcome To Oceania

We live in an everchanging world. Early in 2016, it was announced by the British government that a statue of the renowned English novelist, essayist and critic George Orwell, commissioned by sculptor and artist Martin Jennings, will be installed outside the headquarters of the British Broadcasting Corporation in London. It will bear the inscription of Orwell’s oft-quoted words “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
  • Chris Nyst, Human Rights, Migration, Opinion, Politics

Fair Go Australia

What goes around always seems to come around again. In February 1862 a familiar advertisement appeared in the employment columns of the London Times newspaper. It read simply "WANTED: A smart, active girl to do the general housework of a large family, one who can cook, clean plates, and get up fine linen, preferred. No Irish need apply."