Category Archives: Uncategorized

ABC Online

15th June 2018

A retired judge has backed calls for more drug rehabilitation centres in the bush, warning addicts in regional areas are too often thrown behind bars.

John Nicholson SC served as a New South Wales District Court judge for more than a decade and regularly presided over sittings in Dubbo, where drug-related crime is high.

When sentencing offenders, Mr Nicholson told Background Briefing there were times he had no choice but to impose a jail term.

”I had to take an option that was much less pleasant, but still within the appropriate boundaries of sentencing, and that might be custody,” he said.

FULL STORY

ABC Radio National Background Briefing

Sunday 17th June

A community in regional NSW is pushing for a different approach to how it handles drug-related crime.

While politicians have promised a drug court to divert offenders into rehabilitation, very little has been done.

In this Background Briefing investigation reporter Bronwyn Adcock speaks to community leaders in the city of Dubbo who are fed up with drug addicts having no other option than to be sent to jail.

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The Monthly 

May 2018

The Monthly 

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Inside Story, August 2017

Originally published in the Griffith Review 

Nowra showground is a ten-minute walk from the centre of town: past Best & Less, Jolly Olly’s Discount Variety Store, the Postman’s Tavern and the Bowling Club, along a wide, tree-lined residential street. The gateway is a towering, seven-metre-high sandstone structure with four entrance archways, topped by parapets and crenellated towers, built just after the second world war. A life-sized bronze statue of a soldier, added after the war, stands in front of the gate. He’s depicted without rifle or helmet; as local historical material explains, “His country’s freedom secured, but forever on alert to safeguard the future.”

FULL ARTICLE

ABC Radio National Background Briefing

25th June 2017

He warns we’re facing an infestation of radical clerics, and he’s called for Islamic schools to be shut down. But Mohammed Tawhidi has a mysterious history that sits awkwardly alongside his new image as reformer-in-chief of Islam in Australia.

FULL PROGRAM

ABC Online

28th February 2017

It’s often prescribed as a solution for those struggling with the lack of affordable housing in cities like Sydney: just move to the country.

However, those people living on low incomes in coastal regions of NSW are faring just as badly as city dwellers as they hunt for an affordable roof over their head.

FULL ARTICLE