Media releases

Legal Academics, legal experts, and social justice advocates representing community legal centres, legal services and organisations, law faculties, and advocacy groups have collectively signed an open letter (attached) calling on the NSW Government to fund trained mental health experts as first responders to mental health crises.

The NSW Government has committed to funding Redfern Legal Centre’s Financial Abuse Service to continue and expand the service as a best practice, holistic model, as recommended in a report published in 2022 by Commbank NextChapter.

Redfern Legal Centre is continuing to pursue a public interest outcome in its second COVID fines case.

Today, the second COVID Fine case brought by Redfern Legal Centre was back in the Supreme Court. 

Police in New South Wales are using force against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people at a vastly disproportionate rate compared to non-Indigenous people.

Redfern Legal Centre has filed another NSW Supreme Court application seeking the withdrawal of a COVID fine on the grounds of invalidity. 33,000 COVID fines were withdrawn following the first Supreme Court case in late 2022, and 29,000 remain.

Redfern Legal Centre (RLC) and the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (PIAC) have lodged a complaint against former NSW police commissioner Mick Fuller and NSW Police over their heavy-handed approach to handing out more than 60,000 COVID-19 fines during the pandemic.

Tomorrow (25 May), the Law Enforcement Conduct Commission (LECC) will examine the use of force by NSW Police, along with systemic issues related to the arrest and detention of children.

Today the NSW Supreme Court published its reasons in a test case about COVID-19 fines. The decision clarifies the requirements necessary for a fine to be valid, and calls into disrepute all the remaining 29,017 COVID-19 fines that have not been withdrawn.

The NSW Government’s ‘law and order’ response to the pandemic created significant fines debt and damaged community-police relations in some of the most disadvantaged parts of the state, according to a new UNSW Law School report.