CEFA's Constitutional Forum
Featured Article
It must be the most replayed speech by any Australian politician. It will be on the news again this week for the 40th anniversary of the Whitlam government’s dismissal. And it can be found online in earlier anniversaries and retrospectives.
Debates about how to reconcile the competing interests of freedom of speech and protection from racial discrimination have featured prominently in Australian political life over the last few years.
Last week Dutch MP Geert Wilders arrived in Australia to help launch a new party, the Australian Liberty Alliance. Wilders is described as a controversial global figure.
One of the latest cases brought to the High Court challenging the Constitutional validity of the Federal Government’s offshore immigration detention program was heard by the full bench on 7 and 8 October.
On Monday 16 October, on ABC’s Lateline Opposition Infrastructure Spokesman Anthony Albanese was asked about the Newspoll published earlier that day. The Australian newspaper poll showed the Government and Labor deadlocked if an election were to be held this week.
Have you ever wondered if it is deliberate that members of parliament, from all political persuasions, may try to keep you out of the conversations about proposed referendums and plebiscites?
Maybe they want to keep you uninformed?
Today’s CCF commences what we expect to be a major task to correct Constitutional myths and dubious facts.
In the last year or two you may have read commentary discussing the possibility of the next election being a double dissolution.
But how many of us know what a double dissolution election is, what is involved or why we have the mechanism for it?
Monday’s coup d’état on another first-term Prime Minister has caused us at CEFA to question why the Prime Minister, with such a well-known and important role, is not mentioned in the Constitution.
