Writer
Andrew Fraser
Andrew Fraser is the principal of Fraser Criminal Law and has worked in criminal law in the Canberra region for more than 15 years. Before beginning legal practice, Andrew was a journalist for close to 30 years with the <i>Canberra Times</i> and the <i>Sydney Morning Herald</i>, including stints in the Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery. He is also a former news editor, chief of staff and political correspondent of the <em>Canberra Times</em>.
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Will bail in Victoria get a battering under Battin?
Our annual trip to Queenscliff is a quaint step back in time: ye olde shoppes and seaside fun from a simpler time. Continue reading »
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Just say yes, Minister. It’s prison reform made simple
Many years ago, a number of lawyers lunching with an ACT judicial officer bemoaned their lot as a new Children’s Court Magistrate was rapidly filling the Bimberi Youth Justice Centre with their young clients. Continue reading »
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The prescience of Corporal Hijack
A year ago, Mussa Hijazi, a stone-throwing young teenager of the first Intifada who became a long-serving Canberra lawyer, laid out three options on how the conflict in Gaza would end. Continue reading »
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Inside out: powerful advocates have judges’ ears
The ACT Supreme Court was the scene of two uniquely powerful demonstrations of advocacy on the one evening last week. Continue reading »
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War powers reform: no ticker for a no-brainer
Worst of Friends by Suzanne Tripp Jurmain is a simply wonderful book, aimed at “pre-schoolers and up”. Continue reading »
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Bar hits out at Chief Justice
The ACT Bar Association has confronted Chief Justice (CJ) Lucy McCallum over her self-admitted controversial statements about juries in sexual-assault trials. Continue reading »
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Political void: The end of the Wharf
Forty (40) years ago, the ALP ran its national conference at what was then called Noah’s Lakeside Hotel, with uranium, Timor, taxation, David Combe and south-west Tasmania prominent in discussions. But, who is this meeting up on the dancefloor after the day’s debates and double-crossings? Continue reading »
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Clean slate for prison reform
The Canberra community decided on 19 October to remove from its parliament the two most recent ministers for corrections, Mick Gentleman (Labor) and Emma Davidson (Green). Continue reading »
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Absence of care: AMC prison a drug “supermarket”; force applied with “regularity”, report staff
The ACT’s prison is run by a clique, with detainee bashings covered up, staff bullied into silence and the library better labelled “a supermarket” where any drug desired was freely available. Continue reading »
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Sunlight needed to eradicate prison horrors
Reports of malfeasance involving staff at the Alexander Maconochie Centre, the ACT’s supposedly human-rights-compliant prison, are now too numerous and too frequent to lack substantial veracity. Continue reading »
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ACT legal eagles hit out at Chief Justice
The upper echelons of Canberra’s criminal bar are on a collision course with Chief Justice Lucy McCallum over the conduct of sexual-assault trials in the ACT. Continue reading »
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How the ACT Govt is making more people vulnerable
The ACT Labor-Greens coalition is widely seen as the most permissive and truly liberal government in the country. Continue reading »
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Can music conquer all? You bet
“It’s a bit silly in this day and age but that’s how it is.” Continue reading »
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No, Minister. It’s you who should be in court
Even good minds can get criminal justice wrong, but usually for only so long. Continue reading »
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Departure of Justice Richard Refshauge: end of an era
It was a particularly technical legal point. The colleague was an experienced trial advocate with a case in which he felt there was a slim plot of fertile ground on which he might be able to appeal. But he just couldn’t quite work out how all the pieces might come together. Continue reading »
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Labor not tribal enough for three of its own
The ACT Labor-led Government might lead the nation in many worthy ways and it might, too, you might think, especially six months out from an election, be vigilant to avoid what many might see as an embarrassing own goal. But no… Continue reading »
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ACT law reform to be still-born?
ACT Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury might get the feeling that the new Law Reform and Sentencing Advisory Council he established in November last year is channeling Freddie Mercury: they want it all, and they want it now. Continue reading »
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Police chief hits out – with compassion
ACT Chief Police Officer Neil Gaughan has expressed alarm at the severe constraints on front-line policing in Canberra while showing great sympathy for principles of drug decriminalisation and raising the age of criminal responsibility. Continue reading »
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Indigenous incarceration
More than a quarter of Canberra’s daily average prison population is Indigenous but only 2 per cent of people in the ACT identify as an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person. Continue reading »
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Giving science clout at court, and beyond
Juries seem either to love forensic scientists or just be baffled by them (or by the spin put on their findings by cunning counsel). Some judicial officers have been somewhat slower to embrace them – with potentially disastrous consequences, not just in judge-alone trials, but when evidence is ruled inadmissible and does not go to Continue reading »
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The High Court and the search for a Labor leader
It is more than 20 years since Labor Leader Simon Crean addressed Australian troops leaving to fight in the Bush-Blair-Howard war on Iraq. Continue reading »
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The Rabbi and Corporal Hijack
I met Rabbi Kurt Stone on a bus trip in Europe in 1985, when I was immediately struck by his journalistic pedigree – he covered the Patty Hearst arrests live on radio from underneath a car as bullets flew above. Continue reading »
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Rolls Royce ACT law reform council given Mini Minor resources
The terms of reference for the ACT Law Reform and Sentence Advisory Council are Rolls Royce, but the resources – three public servants – are Mini Minor. While the council is well constructed and will certainly be well led, it needs more horsepower. Continue reading »
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The AFL had the power to turn the tide
My mates and I, growing up in our happy, homogenous and very white suburbia in the 1960s and 70s, would probably not have met an indigenous Australian but for playing footy. Without our great game, we might, at least as kids and teenagers, have remained stuck in the fearful ignorance that was pretty common at Continue reading »
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The Greatest: Vale Ron Barassi
Of the proposition that he was the greatest there can be no doubt. Continue reading »
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Crossing the William Barak Bridge
The woman with the Yes pamphlets outside the MCG on Saturday was unwavering. Continue reading »
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The quiet champions of pill testing preventing “harrowing” deaths
You have only to walk into Canberra’s fixed-site pill testing site to have one of the chief criticisms of such schemes palpably refuted. Continue reading »
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The AWM, from behind the Pool of Reflection
As one of the pipers for the Australian War Memorial, I get a unique view of the crowds around the Pool of Reflection during the daily ritual that is the Last Post Ceremony. Continue reading »
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Pillar of ACT judiciary proves our exceptionalism
The ACT’s judiciary will henceforth be lacking a meticulous pillar of consistency, but the resignation of Magistrate Beth Campbell allows also pause for reflection on the exceptional criminal courts the Territory has grown across Campbell’s quarter-century on the bench and indeed across the 34 years since self-government. Continue reading »
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Calvary hospital unresponsive? Yes, Chief Minister
Canberra’s Calvary Hospital is to be compulsorily acquired by the ACT Government, charged by Chief Minister Andrew Barr with being, amongst other things, unresponsive. Continue reading »
