The impression we gained from reading the transcript of [the choirboy’s] cross-examination reinforced the impression we had gained from watching the recording of him giving evidence. Nothing about his answers under cross-examination suggested that he was concocting, or embellishing, or “fantasising”. On the contrary, both the content of what he said and the way […]

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The scenario by George Pell’s accuser and accepted by the Victorian Appeal Court is not only open to reasonable doubt, it could not have happened. There was no time available in the priests’ sacristy for six minutes of sexual abuse to take place

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A close examination of the transcripts of evidence against George Pell shows the choirboy’s description of the site of the events was seriously mistaken, leaving his testimony devoid of credible corroboration. And at the core of his testimony was a contradiction that defies belief

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In the last two weeks of July, two former Chief Justices of the High Court, Murray Gleeson and Robert French, came out publicly to endorse the concept of a “Voice” in parliament for Australia’s Aboriginal population. Both agreed that a national advisory board, with a membership composed of people of indigenous descent, was needed for […]

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In the George Pell appeal, discrepancies and uncertainties in the evidence of Pell’s sole accuser were treated as proof of his courage and credibility under duress. But pro-Pell witnesses with their own uncertainties found the court dismissed everything they said

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At the Garma Festival, Noel Pearson lavished praise on former Chief Justice Murray Gleeson’s call for the recognition of an Aboriginal Voice in the Constitution. Pearson said the judge had demolished the conservative case put by the Institute of Public Affairs and journalist Andrew Bolt that “race has no place” in the Constitution. Keith Windschuttle disagrees

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The real goal of the Voice was always more than simply allowing indigenous people representation to the Australian parliament — which they have had, anyway, almost continuously since 1967 through successive government advisory boards. It is to further the 'unfinished business' that will never end

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Those of us who still believe the legal system's traditions help preserve us from barbarism can only hope the B-grade spectacle we have witnessed so many times in the persecution of George Pell is an aberration, not a portent of some squalid future

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Those of us who still believe the legal system's traditions help preserve us from barbarism can only hope the B-grade spectacle we have witnessed so many times in the persecution of George Pell is an aberration, not a portent of some squalid future

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Why was the second verdict by the jury in the trials of George Pell so different from the first? If the jury in both cases was a fair sample of the Australian public, and the evidence heard by both juries was identical, you would expect the outcomes to be fairly similar. Like the first, the […]

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