News briefs

BRISBANE — Queensland Council for Civil Liberties vice-president Terry O'Gorman has blasted a new Criminal Justice Commission report which calls for power for itself and state police to seek Federal Court approval to tap telephones in the course of their operations.

O'Gorman said on February 15 that the CJC was "worse than Big Brother". He said the CJC could not be trusted with the phone-tap power and was rapidly becoming a super police force and "a law unto itself".

BRISBANE — "There is no justice" in the National Native Title Tribunal, responded Carpentaria Land Council coordinator Murrandoo Yanner on February 14 to the tribunal's rejection of a native title claim by the Waanyi people over a section of the Lawn Hill station in north-west Queensland.

Tribunal president Justice Robert French on February 14 turned down the application in favour of CRA Ltd, which proposes to build the giant Century zinc mine on the Lawn Hill site. Judge French found that an obscure 1883 pastoral lease, whose validity was rejected by the Waanyi, had extinguished native title.

From GLW issue 176