By Julie McCrossin, The Sydney Cultural Essays The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras embodies all that I love about my multicultural and irreverent hometown. The story of its origin and transformation is remarkable. Mardi Gras is an international model for how to achieve justice for a despised minority. It offers a beacon of hope […]

The Australian Government wants the business, investor and legal communities to grow “start-up ecosystems” and ride the high-tech boom to prosperity. Austrade is setting up five overseas Innovation Landing Pads to help Australian entrepreneurs with “market-ready start-ups” thrive. It launched the first Landing Pad in Tel Aviv, Israel, in mid-2016. Lawyer Micha Tollman is a

Professor Patrick Parkinson AM has been teaching, researching and contributing to public policy in family law and child protection for more than 30 years. He is calling for urgent reform to the family law system to tackle the more litigious members of the legal profession, especially in Sydney. Family lawyers in Sydney are notoriously litigious.

SacredEdge is a festival of arts, music and ideas held at the Uniting Church in Queenscliff each year since 2014. Dates for 2017 – 5, 6, 7 May. Voices from the Edge Weekend and Day/Evening Tickets  NOW AVAILABLE Including: Welcome to Country Music Interactive Art Space Keynote Speakers International Dinner Art for Wellbeing Exhibition Expanded Children’s/Families

I’ll be hosting the Q&A sessions on the Wolper Wellbeing Program this year. All programs at Event Cinemas, Westfield, Bondi Junction, at 7.30pm Wednesday 8 March: PARKINSON’S & REHAB Wednesday 17 May: Q AND A: DYING WITH DIGNITY – Includes Grief and Euthanasia. Monday 3 July: Q AND A: LIVING WITH DIABETES Wednesday 13 September:

The year ahead will be huge for Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, with a controversial new US President and administration in office, ongoing conflict in Iraq and Syria, and a final report due on the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17. She talked to me about the values she believes are under threat, her work to promote

Judge Stephen Scarlett, lover of the arts, vintage Porsches and courtesy in court, recently retired from the Federal Circuit Court after a 28-year judicial career. He was appointed to the Local Court in 1988. He became the Senior Children’s Magistrate in 1995. He was appointed to the new Federal Magistrates Court in 2000. His life

The 2016 Australian of the Year, General David Morrison AO, will deliver the Tristan Jepson Memorial Foundation Lecture on 13 October. George and Marie Jepson set up the foundation to promote psychological health and safety within the legal community, after their son, Tristan, a young lawyer, experienced depression and took his own life. Morrison, who

The new Dean of Law at UNSW, Professor George Williams, AO, has big plans for the university. He wants it to have a greater presence overseas. At home, he wants to fight to protect Australia’s democracy. He talks to Julie McCrossin of his concerns about the gay marriage plebiscite, ASIO’s powers to strip people of