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BRICK BY BRICK
- Originally published by Ocean Road Magazine edition #45, Summer 2022. On the morning of Sunday, 13 August 1961, the citizens of the German...
NO BYSTANDERS
In his massively successful, triple-platinum 2018 album "Astroworld," American rapper Travis Scott got the party started with the high-charged rap...
PRIVACY R.I.P.
Are police watching your Facebook, looking at your private health records, banking details, and email addresses? Are they modifying or copying your...
THE 21ST CENTURY TROLLEY PROBLEM
In the fourth century BC, the Ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle, first ascribed the title "ethics" to the rational study of how humans should...
IS THE BEST DEFENCE REALLY A GOOD TAY-TAY SONG?
In this day and age, virtually everyone has high quality audio-visual recording equipment right at their fingertips. Our ever-ready mobile phone can...
THE FINE DETAIL
As anyone can tell you, the property market is going absolutely gangbusters right now. So much so that a bidder at an auction in Sydney’s south last...
JONATHAN NYST SHORTLISTED FOR LAW AWARD
As the proud father, and principal of Nyst Legal, I am extremely chuffed to be able to announce that this week, for the second year in succession,...
HEROES AND VILLAINS
Some years ago I attended a breakfast at the Sheraton Hotel on the Gold Coast, at which the then highly-respected - and now much-maligned - Victoria...
CAT-O-STROPHIC TECHNOLOGY
The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been vast, not least of all in the development of digital communication all around the globe. It is now...
BREAKING THE INTERNET
On 25 February 2021, the Federal Senate passed the Treasury Laws Amendment (News Media and Digital Platforms Media Bargaining Code) Bill 2021, (“the...
TO JAB OR NOT TO JAB
We finally have vaccines for COVID-19. Australia is set to roll out its first batch, to the priority population - aged and disability care residents...
HARD CASES
The familiar legal adage "Hard cases make bad law" dates back at least as far as the early 1800s. It points to the danger of reacting to an extreme...
STILL SORRY
Between 1905 and 1970, generations of First Nations children were forcibly removed from their families, under a policy of so-called ‘protection.’...
A MATTER OF PRIVILEGE
Confidential communications between lawyers and their clients are sacrosanct. They are subject to legal professional privilege, which means they...
THE LUCKY COUNTRY
This week, as we paused to remember, on the 102nd Remembrance Day, those who fell in foreign fields to defend and preserve our liberties, hopefully...
THE SOCIAL DILEMMA
The latest Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, serves up a thought-provoking critique of the unethical and largely unregulated tactics employed...
D’OH!!
Is it just me, or are we maybe making things just a little more complicated than they really need to be? In the context of litigation, lawyers...
COVID RENTAL RELIEF
Perhaps not surprisingly, I've been deluged recently with enquiries from small business operators and commercial space landlords about rental relief...
TO D OR NOT TO D
Last week was Privacy Awareness Week, which is a curious irony, given the current dilemma faced by millions of Australians – to download or not to...
SHORTLISTED FOR CRIMINAL LAW GONG
Nyst Legal Associate Jonathan Nyst was this week shortlisted as one of 10 finalists in the Criminal Law division of the national Lawyers Weekly 30...
COVID FLUX
With COVID-19 directives flying thick and fast from both federal and state institutions, many of us may be getting a little confused about precisely...
ADAPT OR PERISH
Biologist, historian and futurist H G Wells, author of the sci-fi classic The War of the Worlds - a tale of alien invasion and annihilation by...
NO ORDINARY TIME
It's sometimes said that one man's loss is another man's profit, and that's evidently true, even in these strange and troubled times. Just ask all...
A MILE IN THEIR SHOES
On 20 February 2020, the historical drama, “The Professor and the Madman”, starring Hollywood heavyweights, Sean Penn and Mel Gibson, was rolled out...
PEOPLE POWER
For the past couple of months, I have been receiving messages and calls from concerned relatives and friends back home in Malaysia wanting to know...
A RIGHT TO KNOW
Don’t you sometimes miss the good, old-fashioned Moral High Ground? As a post-war baby, the world I was born into seemed a brave and righteous one....
MALICE AFORETHOUGHT
Last week, a Queensland mother became the first person to be charged under the State’s new, expanded definition of murder laws, after allegedly...
YOUTHFUL EXUBERANCE
School’s out! So hold onto your hats, folks, it's on again. As thousands of school-leavers descend upon Surfers Paradise for the annual ritual...
THE MEANS TO THE END
About ten years before the birth of Christ the great Roman poet Publius Ovidius Naso, in his collection of epistolary poems known as The Heroides,...
DRIVER LOCK OUT LAWS
Over the next 24 months or so, the State government looks set to roll out various amendments to our traffic laws which will have a significant...
TEN GUILTY WITCHES
In February 1692, in a secluded village in the isolated British American colony of Massachusetts, 9-year-old Betty Parris and her 11-year-old cousin...
BEHAVING BADLY O.S.
Last week, Australian man Jock Palfreeman was released from a Bulgarian prison after being incarcerated for 8 years and 11 months for the murder of...