Tag: gold coast property lawyers
  • 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, Politics

Ten Years On

10 years ago today, on 27 November 2004, the indigenous community of Palm Island erupted. The islanders had just heard read out at a public meeting the autopsy report into the death of the local man known posthumously simply as Mulrunji. He had been arrested a week earlier and taken to the Palm Island police lock-up, where he died a short while later following a scuffle with a Senior Sergeant of Police. A medical examination found he had sustained a cut above his right eye and four broken ribs, his portal vein was ruptured and his liver was split almost in two.
  • Brendan Nyst, Property

Supreme Court Rules Incentive Clawbacks Unenforceable

What goes up must come down, and vice versa. In a town that’s seen more than its share of booms and busts, landlords understand the concept all too well. In this town, when the cold winds of the economic winter blow, you cut your cloth to meet the market. If capturing a plum tenant means gifting them a rent-free period, or even shelling out for a fancy fit out, so be it. What you lose on the swing, you pick up on the merry-go-round. Or do you?
  • Chris Nyst, Family Law

To Have And To Hold

Picture: Dylan Nolte Source: Unsplash In a recent matrimonial property dispute case, the Full Bench of the Family ...
  • 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, Criminal Law, Human Rights, Opinion

Need For Restraint

Earlier this week I was sitting in the public gallery of a Magistrates Court on the Sunshine Coast waiting for my client's matter to be called before the magistrate, when a downcast defendant was led into the dock with both hands locked together in a pair of impressive-looking wrist restraints. The police prosecutor proceeded to launch into a dissertation on the defendant's misdemeanours, when the Magistrate abruptly interrupted.
  • Chris Nyst, Opinion

Breaking The Cycle

Violence begets violence. We’ve all become accustomed to television images of US police responding to even the most apparently minor civil disturbance with guns drawn and pointed, barking orders at suspects and bystanders alike, taking no prisoners and no chances whatsoever, because somebody, anybody, could suddenly turn violent and put them in a life-threatening situation. And it’s true, they could. But what came first, the chicken or the egg? Is America an armed society because everyone is armed to the back teeth, or is everyone in America armed to the back teeth because they live in an armed society? Do American police adopt their ‘shoot on sight’ approach because every suspect is lethally dangerous, or is the lethal danger at least in part a product of police willingness to ‘shoot on sight’?
  • Chris Nyst, Criminal Law, Human Rights, Opinion

Heaven Forbid, Maybe Even You And Me

Last week I was invited by Amnesty International to join a panel of criminal justice experts discussing the human rights implications of Queensland's anti-bikie laws, indefinite detention regime, and other current and mooted legislative changes challenging many of our accepted notions of personal liberty. The discussion, which took place in the Banco Court of Brisbane's new Supreme Court complex, and involved a broad spectrum of speakers ranging from the Queensland Police Commissioner Ian Stewart to legal academics and practitioners, was introduced by the President of the Queensland Court of Appeal Justice Margaret McMurdo, who spoke powerfully of the need for lawyers to find a voice in championing human rights both here and internationally.
  • Chris Nyst, Commercial Law, Opinion

Animal Rights, Or Just Plain Monkey Business?

As a novelist and film-maker, and advisor to a singer-songwriter son heavily involved in the music industry here in Australia as well as internationally, copyright is a subject near and dear to my heart. I’ve learned from bitter experience that the golden rule for any creative is ‘hold on to copyright as long as you can’. When I wrote my first film script I found the first thing most producers wanted me to do was assign them copyright in the script, and managers and music labels signing up aspiring rock stars are always looking to slip into their agreements clauses giving them a healthy piece of any copyright action that’s on offer. That’s because when it comes to the business of the arts, copyright means control.