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Following the Financial Services Royal Commission, the Australian Government is acting to change the laws surrounding grandfathered conflicted remuneration on superannuation, investment and insurance products. Conflicted remuneration is a monetary or non-monetary commission given to a financial advisor or planner which is likely to influence the product advice or recommendations they provide to clients. The Government passed reforms five years ago to ban conflicted remuneration, however kickbacks paid on ‘grandfathered’ accounts - set up prior to 1 July 2013 - were still allowed. Clients may be unaware they are paying these kickbacks because they are usually built into their total...

Workers who have been exposed to silica dust in the workplace need to be screened for lung disease and screened using accurate technology as soon as possible. I recently provided evidence to the NSW Parliament Standing Committees’ review into the 2019 Review of the functioning of the Dust Diseases Care Scheme, on behalf of the Australian Lawyers’ Alliance. While the Queensland and Victorian Governments have implemented free lung scans and testing for stonemasons and have identified a significant number of people diagnosed as a result, the NSW Government has not yet offered screenings to all stonemasons and would only be offering free first round screenings to those working for employers...

Australia’s defamation laws were not written with social media in mind. However, the nature of defamation is undoubtedly changing with the rise of social media. Social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter are making it all too easy for people to make damaging and misleading comments. Australian courts have dealt with 16 defamation cases involving Facebook posts and four defamation cases involving Tweets between 2013 and 2017. In one instance in 2013 the District Court of New South Wales awarded a music teacher $105,000 in compensation for defamatory comments posted on Twitter by a former student. Given the viral nature of the internet, it is no surprise that comments made online...