Feature

In Australia the practice of SLAPPS is well known to environmental and social justice activists. A SLAPP or Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation has been around in practice since the 70s when then Queensland premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen raised many nuisance law suits against his detractors as a matter of course. Such cases keep activists stressed out, cost them money and sometimes affect their ability to voice and enact actions against the company or government they are protesting. However, SLAPPS are a bit of a luxury in non-western nations. In Papua New Guinea the effect of collaboration of corporations and government have run legal and environmental roughshod over local activists and indigenous communities defending their homelands. The outrageous case of the Ok Tedi ruling, effectively making illegal the protest by affected peoples of the Ok Tedi mine, is a glaring example of this cronyism.

Homosexual Law Reform proposed by the Rudd Government to end discriminatory practices with regard to pensions still has a long way to go according to Mannie De Saxe of Melbourne Lesbian and Gay Solidarity.

According to Mannie "the Federal Government is about to inflict a new method of elder abuse on the Gay Lesbian Transgender and HIV/AIDS communities, particularly those least able to defend themselves against this new form of discrimination, homophobia and other forms of abuse by targeting same-sex aged, disabled and other disadvantaged most vulnerable people."