Content Warning: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised the following may include the names of First Nations people who have passed away. This email also includes distressing content.
Welcome to the October issue of the Justice Brief.
News and Updates
The law is meant to protect us. So why is it still so hard to get justice?
Discrimination can happen anywhere, at work, in hospitals and in schools. NSW’s anti-discrimination laws are meant to protect people. But what happens when the system makes it too hard to get justice? We’re looking at what’s broken, who gets left behind and how the law needs to change.
COMMUNITY | Victoria’s prison system is failing First Nations people
Why are First Nations people still dying in custody? Aboriginal health organisation VACCHO explains the prison healthcare reforms needed to stop further deaths.
HEAR ME OUT | When police get it wrong, we have to speak up
Everyone has the right to speak up when something goes wrong with police. Hear Me Out helps people understand how to make a complaint and what to do next.
ADVOCACY | Who is protecting children in detention?
Children in youth detention should be protected and cared for. But for some kids as young as 10, youth detention means being locked away for up to 23 hours a day.
AFR | A day of action for alternatives to police
The Alternative First Responders campaign joined students and advocates at ANU to explore better ways to respond when people need help and support communities.
GATHERING | Ask A High Court Judge Hon. Michael Kirby | Monday 7 December 2026 | 5.30-7.30pm
Join us for an evening with two of the most respected legal minds in Australia’s history, the Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG and Distinguished Professor Larissa Behrendt AO.
As a former Justice of the High Court of Australia, Justice Kirby has spent more than five decades at the forefront of Australian law and law reform.
Our incredible Chair, Professor Behrendt, one of Australia’s leading Indigenous legal scholars and advocates, will host the evening and ask Justice Kirby your burning questions.
Nothing is off limits: the law, the dissents that made headlines, life on the bench, the cases that changed him, and what he really thinks about the state of justice today.
- Where: University of Technology, Sydney. Dr. Chau Chak Wing Building
- Cost: From $30
- Bookings: online via Humanitix
In the Media
- When AI makes it easier to litigate, who pays the price? via Lawyers Weekly, 7 October 2026
- Shackling prisoners giving birth should be a last resort via The Guardian, 22 September 2026
- Uncle Benjamin 'BJ' Cruse's fight for justice after alleged historical abuse via ABC, 20 September 2026
MORE:
National Justice Project (NJP)
Address: PO Box 123, Broadway NSW 2007
Tel: +61 2 9514 4440
We acknowledge that we live and work on the lands of First Nations Peoples, and we pay our respects to their Elders past and present. Our Sydney office is located on the lands of the Gadigal People of the Eora Nation, whose sovereignty was never ceded. This land always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.