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Byron Shire
March 28, 2024

New NSW law makes police ‘judge and jury’

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NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge.
NSW Greens MP David Shoebridge.

The Baird Government last night passed legislation that allows punishment to be imposed without charge, trial or conviction, the Greens have said.

The laws, which passed the upper house last night, grant fresh discretionary powers to police make so-called ‘public safety orders’ that restrict people’s freedom.

‘In a busy night trashing civil liberties the parliament also created a new form of criminal sanction called ‘serious crime prevention orders’, which can be made on unreliable hearsay evidence in proceedings that use the lesser civil standard of proof,’ Greens MP and justice spokesperson David Shoebridge said.

Using ‘public safety orders’ police will have the discretion to ban people from daily activities like using phones or computers for up to five years, and to ban them from attending an event or locations for 72 hours, currently a power reserved only for judges.

The orders can also be issued by police to prohibit a person from attending their local PCYC, church or mosque on any given day for the duration of a person’s natural life and are not subject to any appeal.

Both ‘public safety orders’ and ‘serious crime prevention orders’ can be issued against people with no criminal conviction and who are entirely innocent of any intention to be involved in criminal activity. They can be issued even if a person is not charged of any offence or has been acquitted of an offence.

‘These laws are a threat to basic rights and individual freedoms and remove key protections from our criminal justice system,’ Mr Shoebridge said.

‘Public safety orders are an even more powerful and less accountable version of the “move-on” powers the Coalition recently gave to police and will give police the discretion to ban people from attending events or locations for 72 hours.

‘Public safety orders are made by police with no court oversight and can be in effect for the whole of a person’s life, and all of this without there being any merits appeal to a court.

‘Serious crime prevention orders can be made by a court based on hearsay evidence presented by police and can apply to entirely innocent people who never had an intention to be involved in any criminal activity.

‘We have seen in the past that discretion police powers have a disproportionate impact on vulnerable people, and these new public safety orders will inevitably work in the same way,’ Mr Shoebridge said.

The Bar Association, the Law Society, the International Commission of Jurists and the Council for Civil Liberties have all labelled the laws ‘a gross affront to the rule of law and democracy’.

Mr Shoebridge said the laws were ‘the almost inevitable result when you have the police minister also acting as the justice minister and taking a more senior role in the cabinet to the attorney general.’

‘The police effectively get whatever [they want] with the parliament just rubber-stamping their request.

‘Remarkably there has not been a single concrete example raised by this government to justify why these increased police powers are needed.

‘Put simply, this move by the Baird government to set up a parallel legal system where punishment can be imposed without charge, criminal trial or conviction is offensive to our traditions of liberty,’ Mr Shoebridge said.

 


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15 COMMENTS

  1. This is changing the way our judicial system works and stands for whatever happened to the rule of law where anyone is innocent before proven guilty! This law gives far and wide too much power to police! Since when did they become the judge and jury? I cannot understand why people’s civil liberties are taken without valid reason let alone a conviction! Please tell me this is a joke!

  2. who gives a shit…..police and the nsw nanny state have been over stepping the mark when it comes to peoples liberties for years. why should anyone care about one more infringement on our rights…..blah blah

  3. Baird must have the blood of Goebbels and Hitler, Himmler, not to mention Hesse in his blood. Here we have Fascism at work in all its glory. That the people will defend themselves is a given and blood will be spilt on both sides of the fence. The people who love democracy and have had their rights ripped away by a pathetic creature like him will not allow him to succeed.

  4. So murderers and rapists who should be in for life are released after a short sentence like only this weeka man who killed his wife and three children got out after about 9 years in jail of course he seemed repentant he was in jail you can act repentant in jail a bit sorry after the fact that you’ve killed peopleand the double jeopardy laws this week they refused to get rid of them is a man who goes to a check out and smirks at this woman who is serving him because he got off the murder of her 18 month old child when he raped her and murdered her and threw her on the roof of the toilet block like a rag doll the newspapers said and he got off on that double jeopardy and he goes to the check out to rub it in and make her serve him that is happening in Australia.we still have laws that protect criminals who break into your house if you hurt them they can sue you for damages if trip over and break a leg they can come at you for damages .people can’t defend themselves in their own home.once a prisoner fell out of a bunk in jail and he was able to get $70,000 damages paid to him because he hurt himself why can’t we just call it an accident he should have been more careful. so we have all these inconsistencies in the law and misrepresentation of human rights because in jail yet still have lost a lot of your rights to be able to sue the jail just because you fall out of the bunkand we read in the paper all the time and we hear on the radio about the people getting off I’m really serious crimes what about all the men lately who are killing little babies a little toddlers of their girlfriend we know what’s happening there they don’t like the competition I want to have her all to themselves they don’t like to see another man’s child with her and these are brutal murders and these men get off with lenient sentences. Any brute who kills or maims an innocent helpless child should be behind bars for life.but the reality is there’s no room in a child so they have to let people off although they should have a trackerband around their foot and have home detention for the rest of their life.and all gaols should be self supporting self sufficient and not supported by government taxpayer money every prisoner should be gainfully employed and active and not kept and doing nothing.

  5. At the age of 17 I was pulled over at gun point by a NSW police sergeant pistol whipped, beaten and verbally abused. My crime !!! driving a car with a noisy exhaust. At all times I was polite and showed no resistance to the officer as I was terrified of the gun. I was never able to get any one to take this matter forward. So with these new laws its even worse watch out NSW

  6. The Political Parties within their so called constitutions are treating
    Quote
    “Australia as an independent republic,”
    The Political Parties private High Court of Australia Chief Justice STATES,
    “We do so against the backdrop of the supremacy of Parliament” therefore NO separation of powers, No rights, No Courts of Common Law all backed up by the power of the gun held by the Political Parties THUGS (NSW Police) having NO CROWN AUTHORITY to stop and detain. = “Republican Dictatorship”
    The Political Parties under their constitutions are NO better than:
    Hitler, Gastro, Gaddafi, Stalin, Idi Armin, Mao Tse tung, Pol Pot and Kim Jong-il

    Dick Yardley

  7. Dick is Right, the nature of the governments that governs Australia are now the same corporate (DEAD)executive style of government that Hitler administered in WW-2 and is the same system that the US Government uses now. Australia, being a subdivision company of the UNITED STATES corporation, uses the same executive style of corporate administrative system. The only Authority they have is over their own “corporate” citizens, but if you refuse to hold their fraud quasi Citizen ACCOUNT, (That is identified by your name rendered in the ALL UPPERCASE FOREIGN GLOSSA TEXT) they terrorize you the same way Hitler did to the citizens of GERMANY in order that you consent to being their foreign corporate “citizen”

    Corporate citizens are not people, they are trustees of a foreign account! rendered as no more than a thing! .. being a dead account holder (Trustee) of the foreign corporate governing company. A “trustee” must settle the debts! … Trustee’s have no more rights than what the terms and conditions of the contract constitutes. A private citizen of a foreign company, even though its called COMMONWEALTH OF AUSTRALIA, is no longer a citizen of his own country, he becomes a simple trustee (SLAVE) of the foreign company he serves.

    If you think your Australian but have your name on the electoral roll of the State or Federal government, you have been deceived! … you are no longer the public! you become the private trustee (Debtor) of the charges of the State, and what is the State? … a foreign company registered to the UNITED STATES SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION, District of Columbia. If you are a citizen of the State or Federal Governments of Australia, you have no rights! … you are not the public! …

      • You need to learn about going Postliminary, which you can do by checking out ‘the GLOSSA channel’ on Youtube. You will also see lots of interviews wth Romley Stewart on that Youtube channel as well. Romley wins in court, but the truth of that gets suppressed.

  8. Both Dick Yardley & Romley Stewart are well and truly correct. The problem here is the fact that these men have been right all along with their knowledge and views of the great deception that encompasses all.
    I know that Dick has been exposing these criminal activities since the early 1970’s but no one had the intelligence to actually listen to what has and will be reality.
    Perhaps Dick should say it once again just for the sheeples?
    There is a lot more that he knows that is going to be and has been perpetrated against every man woman and child in this country.
    The greatest problem facing those in the know is “Consant. Dissonance” (spelling perhaps not correct)

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