Category: Opinion
  • Chris Nyst, International, Opinion, Politics

From Little Things

Last week ‘New York’s Finest’ were reaching for their Smartphones, posting happy snaps of panhandlers begging on Broadway and vagrants urinating in the streets. What the…?!
  • Chris Nyst, Hollywood, Litigation, Opinion, Politics

The Bloody Insult

Not everything's about money. One of my favourite Australian films of all time is Ken Hannan’s classic 1975 drama Sunday Too Far Away. It tells the tale of knock-about shearers working the sheds on an outback sheep station in 1955 Australia. Their tough existence is summed up in the title, paraphrasing what’s known as The Shearers Wife’s Lament – “Friday night too tired, Saturday night too drunk, Sunday too far away.” Jack Thompson plays Foley, a hard-drinking gun shearer who leads his workmates in a strike over their substandard working conditions. When their employer brings in non-union labour in a bid to break the strike, Foley and his mates dig in. It’s a great line, and a great way to end the film.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Human Rights, Opinion

A Very Big Call

I was surprised to read this week former Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock's comment that it is unlikely proposed anti-terror laws would see an Australian deported before their appeal is heard. Some years back a client of mine was deported to the UK by ministerial direction pursuant to section 501 of the Immigration Act. He had come to Australia with his family as a child, and was in his 20s when he was convicted of a criminal offence.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Politics

Ruffled Eagle Feathers

A clash of Queensland judicial personalities flared earlier this week, with the Courier Mail newspaper reporting on Wednesday a serious difference of opinion between retired District Court Chief Judge Patsy Wolfe and current President of the Court of Appeal Margaret McMurdo. When Judge Wolfe retired in September last year, Justice McMurdo gave a speech at an Australian Association of Women Judges luncheon, held in Judge Wolfe’s honour, in which she lamented what she perceived to be the deepening state of gender inequality on the Queensland bench. The following day Judge Wolfe reportedly wrote a private letter to the Newman government, distancing herself from Justice McMurdo's comments, and claiming no one at the luncheon agreed with her remarks.
  • Chris Nyst, International, Opinion

Vive l’humanité

As distressing as last week’s terrorist attacks in Paris proved to be, they were not the first, and certainly not the worst, acts of terrorism the French people have endured in living memory. During the German occupation of France in the early 1940s, Christian soldiers scoured the streets and homes of France arresting, gaoling, and murdering thousands of Jewish citizens. In that terrible time, the French people demonstrated their capacity to endure and overcome racism, terrorism, and inhumanity.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Opinion, Technology

The Underbelly Issue

A couple of years back, at the International Criminal Law Congress, I delivered a paper on the effect of pre-trial publicity on jury trials. Victorian Supreme Court Justice Betty King, who presided over the trial of Melbourne underworld figure Carl Williams and others charged in the wake of the Melbourne gangland war, was on the same panel of speakers. Justice King famously banned the high-rating Underbelly television series from being aired in the state of Victoria during Williams’ trial because of the prejudicial effect it might have on the deliberations the jury. Naturally, the ban caused quite a stir and upset a lot of people, not least of all the producers at Channel 9. But in the end it probably had significantly less effect than Justice King had hoped it would. Despite the television ban, the first episode of Underbelly was available online, everywhere throughout the world wide web, within 20 minutes of it being aired on television in states outside Victoria.
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Human Rights, Opinion

Exactly What They Take

Frank Darabont’s 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption is an enduring classic of American cinema. Based on the Stephen King novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, it tells the story of Andy Dufresne, a young banker sentenced to life imprisonment in the tough Shawshank State Penitentiary for the murder of his wife and her lover, a crime he says he didn’t commit. That’s tough material for any audience, and when the film was first released it all but tanked at the box office. But eventually moviegoers came to embrace the morality tale at the heart of Andy’s redemption, and the film went on to outstanding critical acclaim, recognised as one of the best films of our time. Most of the most quotable quotes come from Andy’s fellow inmate Ellis “Red” Redding, played with understated dignity by the great Morgan Freeman, whose gentle narration becomes a quiet commentary of Dufresne’s desperate struggle to maintain his self-worth in the face of brutality and hopelessness.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion

Big Things Grow

From little things big things grow. How true it is. I was filled with an enormous sense of pride recently when I drove past one of the giant Griffith University billboards (pictured above) celebrating the success of young Brisbane Barrister Joshua Creamer, a former member of the Nyst team.
  • Chris Nyst, Entertainment, Opinion

So Long Maggie And Dave, And Thanks For All The Fission

I guess just about everybody who's ever had anything much to do with the Australian film industry has a soft spot for television film reviewers Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton. Affectionately referred to by all and sundry simply as Margaret and David, for 28 years the pair agreed, disagreed, and agreed to disagree, about an estimated 8000 films they reviewed, firstly at SBS on The Movie Show and then at the ABC in At The Movies, becoming what filmmaker Greg Maclean has called "a genuinely important part of the cultural landscape of cinema in Australia."
  • Chris Nyst, Human Rights, International, Opinion, Privacy

Carly Nyst Addresses UN Human Rights Council

On Friday last week my dear daughter Carly Nyst, a UK-based Australian lawyer who is currently the Legal Director of the human rights group Privacy International in London, addressed the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on the right to privacy in the digital age. As part of a panel which included Flavia Panasieri , the Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Special Rapporteur on freedom of expression with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Catalino Botero Marino, Carly told the Commission that the right to privacy is a fundamental part of human dignity, which guarantees the protection of other human rights such as the freedom of expression, and should be jealously defended by the United Nations, particularly in the wake of WikiLeaks and the Edward Snowden Affair. The Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights Ms Botero said the Commission recognised that systematic collection of data by governments directly affects the right to privacy and freedom of expression, and appropriate safeguards and controls must be elaborated to prevent those negative effects on human rights.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Sport

Satts Tells It All In Glory

Yesterday I joined South Sydney faithful at the old Redfern Town Hall in Sydney for the launch of Glory, Glory, the autobiographical account of the life and times of South Sydney rugby league legend ‘Gentleman’ John Sattler. MC’ed by John’s premiership-winning son Scott, and introduced by life-long South Sydney tragic Ray Martin, the event was a raging success, not least because of the engaging reminiscences of the great man himself.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion, Politics

Cedric Hampson, One Of God’s Own Gentlemen. RIP

When I received a call last night to hear my old friend and mentor Cedric Hampson QC had passed away at his home over the weekend I was left with a deep sense of sadness. Cedric was not only a great intellect, and a very fine lawyer, but he really was one of God’s own gentlemen. A published novelist and lover of the arts, the former rugby player, Rhodes Scholar and President of the Queensland Bar Association was a man for all seasons, equally at home dissecting thorny legal issues before the Court of Appeal as he was sipping red wine and chatting idly about our common interest in movies, music and the arts. Over the years  Cedric and I worked closely together on many cases, including the successful appeal of former One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, and he was  always an inspiration. He was rightly recognised as without peer in the Queensland legal profession for generations. Above all he was just a lovely man – always courteous, avuncular and generous of spirit - and he will be sorely missed.