RLC in the media

Forty civil society organisations have expressed alarm at reports of police overreach in preemptive policing of protest, with NSW police conducting covert surveillance and a raid on climate activists north of Sydney on Sunday.

New South Wales residents owe $1 billion to the state government because of unpaid fines, with more than 380,000 individuals having unpaid enforceable debt with Revenue NSW.

The gap in inequality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians is depressingly vast in the legal and justice system.

New penalties have been introduced for protesters who block major traffic and infrastructure in NSW.

In November 2021 the NSW Ombudsman released a report revealing Revenue NSW used automated systems to unlawfully and forcibly collect debt from disadvantaged and financially vulnerable people since January 2016.

A coalition of 33 legal organisations including RLC have signed an open letter, calling on NSW finance minister Damien Tudehope to introduce a four-month pause on enforcement action on COVID fines, to support people already experiencing vulnerabiliy.

More than 7000 people have applied to Revenue NSW to overturn a COVID-19 fine but only one in 10 appeals were successful, a new freedom of information request obtained by RLC has revealed. 

Lawyers from Slater and Gordon and Redfern Legal Centre who are launching a class action investigation into potentially unlawful searches by New South Wales Police at Splendour in the Grass have detailed their investigation to NME, saying they aim to file proceedings by next year.

Lawyers have launched a class action investigation into what they believe could be hundreds of “unlawful” strip searches by New South Wales Police of patrons at the Splendour in the Grass Music Festival.

Investigators from Redfern Legal Centre and Slater and Gordon Lawyers are looking into unlawful Police searches at the Splendour in the Grass music festival.