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AN Australian legal first that could jail offenders for three years that financially take advantage of the vulnerable elderly has drawn a mixed response from the very people in charge of prosecuting the offences.
In conjunction with the ACT Bar Association, the body that represents solicitors once called the proposed legislation both “flawed” and “defective” after also condemning the Legislative Assembly over its removal of a defendant’s right to a fair trial.
Some 12 months on since initially spelling out their grave concerns before it became law, the ACT Law Society has stood firm.
“The Law Society’s position on this legislation has not changed,” president Elizabeth Carroll said in a statement.
ACT criminalises elder abuse, introduces jail term
By Naomi Neilson|21 April 2021
Anyone found guilty of committing financial elder abuse in the ACT could now face up to three years behind bars under a suite of new laws that has also been drafted to protect older Australians from neglect, harm and abuse of vulnerable people.
With almost 15 per cent of older Australians experiencing some form of elder abuse in their formative years, the legislation should provide an important safeguard to prevent any further abuse that leads to harm or a financial benefit. It is hoped that the threat of time behind bars will deter offenders from committing the crime.
Brisbane, Australia
– In the early hours of the morning, security guards at an inner-city motel and serviced apartment complex in Brisbane would begin knocking on each door. They were conducting a headcount, checking that everyone was still inside their room, and still alive, just as they had every day since the start of 2019.
This was Brisbane’s Kangaroo Point Central Hotel & Apartments, a makeshift immigration detention centre which the Australian government terms “an alternative place of detention” (APOD).
Until this week, it had been used to confine people like 32-year-old Iraqi Ahmad Albardan and other refugees and asylum seekers who were detained at either of Australia’s offshore processing facilities – Nauru and Manus Island, both around 4,000km from Australia’s shores – but had been sent to Australia for medical treatment under the country’s now repealed medevac law.
News by Lauren McMah There is a push for a ban to be considered on popular artificial stone benchtops amid a rising rate of potentially deadly illness among the nation s tradies. Artificial or engineered stone benchtops have seen a rise in popularity in Australian homes as a cheap and attractive alternative to marble or granite. The National Dust Diseases Taskforce says the home renovation trend has coincided with rising rates of silicosis among construction workers - an incurable and potentially deadly lung disease associated with breathing in dangerous silica fibres during the cutting, polishing and grinding of the stone. Many of those who are diagnosed with the disease, including stonemasons, are aged as young as their 20s and 30s.