Almost 200,000 Australians are believed to have dementia and many more are involved in caring for a family or friend with dementia. Talina Drabsch provides an overview of the prevalence of dementia, now and over the next 50 years, and discusses its economic and social costs. She highlights the impact on the health and aged...

Lenny Roth provides an overview of the main provisions of the federal government’s Work Choices legislation and the current High Court challenge mounted by state governments. He looks at the coverage of new system and at changes to award wages, award conditions, legislative conditions, workplace agreements, constraints on industrial action, dispute resolution procedures and unfair...

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has concluded that most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. However, this ‘consensus’ science of the IPCC has been disputed. Stewart Smith examines the challenge for governments in assessing this conflicting science to...

Gareth Griffith examines the potential implications for New south Wales arising from the recent debate on free speech, most notably in respect to the Commonwealth’s new anti-terrorism legislation. The paper focuses on three areas of the law, all of which impinge on the issue of free speech. First, it considers the law of sedition as...

In November 2005, the NSW Attorney General announced that the government would introduce majority verdicts of 11:1 for criminal trials. If the proposed measures pass into legislation, majority verdicts would be available for all criminal offences, provided a minimum deliberation period has passed. Talina Drabsch examines the arguments for and against this change in the...