Law and
public health: addressing obesity
by Christopher Reynolds
This article considers how law might address the increasing problems associated with obesity. Using our experience with other areas of public health law it illustrates a number of strategies that could be devised. Our options in this area are far from simple: there is argument about what is effective; there is a tension between those who would favour an approach which deals with energy expenditure (exercise) and those who would focus on energy taken in (food consumption patterns). The food industry is powerful and influential, its interests not necessarily served by strategies to reduce obesity. Nevertheless, the potential impacts of obesity on individuals and communities make this a crucial issue that also illustrates important ideas about the role public health policy can play in sponsoring change and how it can also link in with initiatives to achieve a sustainable society.
Partnering for
public health: Seeking socially just policy and outcomes for drug users
by Philip Lynch and Alex Wodak
In November 2003, the Howard Government announced its intention to amend the law to legalise discrimination against drug users. Following a coordinated campaign involving the legal profession, the medical and health care professions, and drug user groups, a Senate Committee issued a report strongly recommending against enactment of the law and calling on the Government to devote greater resources to drug treatment and harm minimisation strategies. Using the campaign against the Disability Discrimination Amendment Bill 2003 (Cth) as a case study, this article aims to examine, discuss and further develop strategies for cross-sector campaigning and collaboration in the interests of socially just public health policy and outcomes for drug users.
Representing
the mentally ill: The critical role of advocacy under the Mental Health Act
1986 (Vic)
by Megan Pearson
This article seeks to examine the
important role of advocates before the Mental Health Review Board in ensuring
that the evidence of treating doctors is critically examined, and in suggesting
alternative treatment models. The article links the current lack of advocacy
with the subsequent difficulty in ensuring that parliament's key objective of
least-restrictive treatment is complied with and argues that self-determination
is a desirable goal in future policy.
Neo-Liberal
legal morality and access to medicine: The case of AIDS
By Omar Swartz
This article discusses how the law often creates a different set of moral priorities than ones that value human life. By highlighting the connection between intellectual property law and the law's hindrance of a widespread access to important AIDS medicine, it provides an example of how neo-liberal legal morality prevents human beings from developing a species-wide identification in which the good of any one individual is tied to the good of humanity.
Animals
and the law: Towards a guardianship model
by George Seymour
This article analyses the position of animals in the legal system. The concept of personhood, and its possible extension to animals, is explored. The author advocates for a move towards a guardianship model for animals, similar to that for small children.
Policing
Indigenous Australians
by Christine Feerick
Common non-threatening behaviour, such as the offence of offensive language is punishable at the discretion of police. Typical offenders include Indigenous Australians who are heavily over-represented for the offence, and the victim is usually a police officer. This article explores the factors contributing to the over-representation of Indigenous Australians arrested for the offence of offensive language, and analyses whether this situation is set to change in the wake of DPP v Carr [2002] NSWSC 194.
Disability
and the Australian Defence Force
by Hyder Gulam
This Brief is about how the judiciary
has dealt with the Australian Defence Force (ADF) and anti-discrimination law,
in particular the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) (DDA).
Although it is arguable that the courts have demonstrated a wide degree of deference
to the ADF based on one particular aspect of the Commonwealth anti-discrimination
law, the combat-related duties provision in s 53 of the DDA. It is too
premature to determine whether the courts have granted a wide latitude to the
ADF in interpreting the anti-discrimination law given the only two cases, both
concerning the same facts, have gone in different directions, with the spoils
going to the court of higher authority.
What's been
left out of Australia's first Bill of Rights?
by Michael Walton
After a lengthy period of community consultation, committee drafting and parliamentary debate, the Human Rights Act 2004 (ACT) came into force on 1 July 2004. The Act is largely a faithful adoption of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights into the domestic law of the ACT. But what has been excluded is as interesting as what has been included. Rights left out of the Act include economic, social and cultural rights, indigenous rights, the right to self-determination and environmental rights.
Asia
Pacific 1: Tolerance the Samoan way
by Kirsty Ruddock
A court decision in Samoa involved
the courts in considering conflicts between the Constitution of the Independent
State of Western Samoa 1960 and Samoan customary law. The decision, Lafaialii
v Attorney General [2003] WSSC 8 illustrates how Samoa has sought to interpret
its western traditional rights-based system and reconcile it with customary
law which is still a key part of Samoan society and culture.
Asia Pacific
2: Stability returns in Solomons
by Ken Brown
A brief update on Solomon Islands which went through a period of dramatic instability between 1999 and 2003. This has largely settled down due to the intervention of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands supported by a coalition of countries from throughout the Pacific.
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