menu_open Columnists
Andrew Fraser

Andrew Fraser

Canberra Times

We use cookies to provide some features and experiences in QOSHE

More information  .  Close

Will bail in Victoria get a battering under Battin?

Our annual trip to Queenscliff is a quaint step back in time: ye olde shoppes and seaside fun from a simpler time. There is history aplenty: a...

07.01.2025 5

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

Just say yes, Minister. It’s prison reform made simple

Many years ago, a number of lawyers lunching with an ACT judicial officer bemoaned their lot as a new Children’s Court Magistrate was rapidly...

15.12.2024 2

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

The prescience of Corporal Hijack

A year ago, Mussa Hijazi, a stone-throwing young teenager of the first Intifada who became a long-serving Canberra lawyer, laid out three options...

01.12.2024 4

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

Inside out: powerful advocates have judges’ ears

The ACT Supreme Court was the scene of two uniquely powerful demonstrations of advocacy on the one evening last week. Justice Chrissa...

29.11.2024 3

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

War powers reform: no ticker for a no-brainer

Worst of Friends by Suzanne Tripp Jurmain is a simply wonderful book, aimed at “pre-schoolers and up”. It tells of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams...

28.11.2024 2

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

Bar hits out at Chief Justice

The ACT Bar Association has confronted Chief Justice (CJ) Lucy McCallum over her self-admitted controversial statements about juries in...

21.11.2024 2

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

Political void: The end of the Wharf

Forty (40) years ago, the ALP ran its national conference at what was then called Noah’s Lakeside Hotel, with uranium, Timor, taxation, David...

09.11.2024 6

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

Clean slate for prison reform

The Canberra community decided on 19 October to remove from its parliament the two most recent ministers for corrections, Mick Gentleman (Labor)...

29.10.2024 1

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

Absence of care: AMC prison a drug “supermarket”; force applied with “regularity”, report staff

The ACT’s prison is run by a clique, with detainee bashings covered up, staff bullied into silence and the library better labelled “a...

16.10.2024 2

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser

Sunlight needed to eradicate prison horrors

Reports of malfeasance involving staff at the Alexander Maconochie Centre, the ACT’s supposedly human-rights-compliant prison, are now too...

11.10.2024 2

Pearls and Irritations

Andrew Fraser