Since the end of World War Two, the speed, breadth and long-term consequences of world events have put human rights high on the international political and legal agenda. The Holocaust, genocides in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda and Sudan, and too many acts of mass terrorism are some of the events that have placed them there. Some nations — usually inveterate abusers — would just as soon that human rights were not prominent. Others — usually rights respecters — have taken a proactive approach to protecting individual fundamental freedoms by incorporating into their own legal systems all or many of the traditional rights found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international protective instruments. In fact, protecting human rights has gained sufficient momentum in the international arena that even most countries that do not support such rights at least pay lip service to them and include them — though often with qualifications — in their constitutional laws and charters.

Among the rights at the heart of the debate, rights fundamental to democracy and its institutions, are those of conscience, religion and belief. Touching at the core of what it means to be human, at the very essence of the significance men and women give to their lives and the lives of others, protection of rights of conscience can be found in virtually every human rights charter, bill, and comprehensive code. The importance of these rights permits analysis of their protection as models for the protection of fundamental rights in general.

Broad, noble claims of a right to freedom of religion seem, prima facie, unobjectionable, but, that said, ‘a right which is not recognised by law is nothing but a pious hope’. Allowing people to be discriminated against on the basis of their religious beliefs or practices limits their right to freedom of religion, if indirectly. In any bill of rights that may be introduced, freedom of religion could be included. In my view, however, this would need to be supported by specific and appropriately crafted equal opportunity legislation to afford realistic protection of cultural and religious practices (subject to the constraints of the law generally). Thus, in July 2009 I introduced into the South Australian House of Assembly amendments to the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 to ban discrimination on the basis of religion. My effort was unsuccessful, but I think this is a discussion worth continuing.

In this chapter, I discuss the amendments I proposed, and the reasoning behind them. With reference to State and Territory legislation, International Treaties and bills of rights of other countries, I consider how the proposed amendments would protect the freedom to hold, express, declare and practice religious beliefs and values. I then discuss some objections to this proposal. Finally, I discuss how such provisions might relate to a bill of rights, taking account of concerns expressed by some academics and commentators, who believe that a bill of rights is not the best avenue for such protection.

Neutrality, whether formal or substantive, does not exist in the context of the religion clauses in the United States Constitution. Others have recognized this. Still others have come part way to this conclusion by suggesting that neutrality is inherently dependant upon the baseline one chooses to use in describing it, and thus it does not exist apart from these baselines. Yet claims of neutrality cannot be proven. There is no independent neutral truth or baseline to which they can be tethered. This is important because it means that any baseline to which we attach neutrality is not neutral, and claims of neutrality built on these baselines are by their nature not neutral. This might seem circular — that is, since there is no independent state of neutrality from which to derive neutral rules or applications of rules, there can be no neutral results and no means by which one can prove a given baseline is neutral. Yet examples, even in US Supreme Court opinions, are readily available. The Court has used varying concepts or baselines of neutrality, and in several cases Justices in the majority and dissenting opinions claimed to be relying on the same or similar principles of neutrality, yet they reached opposite conclusions.

This critique of neutrality applies to both the recent Court's use of formal neutrality (a concept explained further below) and to earlier Courts' substantive neutrality or separation as neutrality approaches (also explained further below). This chapter pays much attention to the concept of formal neutrality that seems most pervasive today, at least in cases involving aid to religious entities or individuals, equal access, and free exercise clause exemptions. As will be seen, the critique of neutrality provided herein applies to any claim that a given approach is ‘neutral’ in regard to the many highly contested questions arising when government and religion interact in our complex regulatory state. In the end, as with interpretive claims based on hard originalism, neutrality requires value choices that are often masked under the cloak of evenhandedness or other mostly rhetorical devices.

How should the laws of the state be balanced against the precepts of religion? In Canada, this age-old question has received renewed attention since the 1982 adoption of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which constitutionally guarantees freedom of ‘conscience and religion’ to every person in the country. Like most modern Western democracies, Canada does not have a state religion and the Canadian polity is comprised of individuals holding a wide range of religious views. This means that, in order to comply with the Charter's guarantee of religious freedom, law-makers must consider the impact of legislation on a wide range of religious beliefs and practices. To ensure that legislators take proper account of religious freedom, the Canadian constitution empowers the courts to nullify any law that unjustifiably infringes upon Charter rights. This casts Canadian courts as the arbiters of any conflict between positive law and religious freedom. In order to fulfil this role, the courts have been forced to conceptualize and articulate a meaningful definition of freedom of religion and to set parameters on the constitutional protection of freedom of religion so as to accommodate other competing, but legitimate, social concerns.

In this chapter, my primary intention is to explain how ‘freedom of religion’ operates as a constitutional right under the Charter and to outline the scope of this right as it has been defined thus far by Canadian case law. By way of background, I begin with a brief discussion of the role played by ‘freedom of religion’ in Canadian law prior to the adoption of the Charter.

In 2007, Paul Gray, a columnist for the Melbourne Herald Sun, vented his spleen against the Australian Catholic Film Office and the Australian Film Institute for the awards given to Rolf de Heer's film Ten Canoes. His reason: the film's subtitles. Australian money, he argued, was fritted away on a film that was not in the ‘national language’. He went on to claim that this made the film ‘elitist’, ‘baffling’, ‘high-minded’, its awards being a case of ‘the unsociable rushing to laud the unwatchable’. The Jesuit Father Richard Leonard's rationale for the ACFO award was that it ‘can only be a useful instrument for reconciliation’. In contrast, Gray queried whether any reconciliation was possible. For him, reconciliation was tied to the universality of English at least as defined with an Australian frame of reference, or even broader, movies as ‘the business of the masses’. Drew Roberts, from the Adult Multicultural Education Services in Melbourne, underscored the significance of Australia's first Indigenous language (Ganalbingu) film in a context where only 18 of 128 extant Indigenous languages are currently exempt from the threat of extinction. Death and loss have already severely decimated the 500 dialects and 250 languages estimated to have layered the great southern land before white settlement. Gray at least acknowledged that he was a ‘white guy’ but what he did not acknowledge was that white guys who speak English are presumably the measure of universality.

Laws prohibiting religious vilification (or religious ‘hate speech’) are controversial and often criticised. On the one hand, it seems obviously wrong that someone should be insulted and humiliated on the basis of his or her religious commitments. But how far should the law go in putting controls on freedom of speech? Critics charge that religious vilification laws amount to an undue restriction of freedom of speech, and in fact may generate, rather than reduce, acrimonious religious debate in multicultural and multi-faith societies.

This chapter is sympathetic to those critiques. But the particular angle it addresses is this: are religious vilification laws really necessary? The common law has dealt with verbal attacks on others for many years through the law of the tort of defamation. I suggest that many of the aims of those who propose religious vilification laws can be met by noting the remedies that are available under the ordinary law of defamation. In addition, I suggest that some of the concerns raised by opponents of the laws are met by the various defences and qualifications that have developed in the defamation area.

This chapter serves as a preliminary study, but I hope that it may at least open the way for further research on a topic that will become increasingly contentious. At the very least, I hope that the chapter illustrates that the adoption of further protection for human rights in Australia, including for freedom of religion, does not assume the adoption of religious vilification laws, and indeed, may be a further reason not to introduce such laws.

The brain is the most complex organ in our body. Indeed, it is perhaps the most complex structure we have ever encountered in nature. Both structurally and functionally, there are many peculiarities that differentiate the brain from all other organs. The brain is our connection to the world around us and by governing nervous system and higher function, any disturbance induces severe neurological and psychiatric disorders that can have a devastating effect on quality of life.

Our understanding of the physiology and biochemistry of the brain has improved dramatically in the last two decades. In particular, the critical role of cations, including magnesium, has become evident, even if incompletely understood at a mechanistic level. The exact role and regulation of magnesium, in particular, remains elusive, largely because intracellular levels are so difficult to routinely quantify. Nonetheless, the importance of magnesium to normal central nervous system activity is self-evident given the complicated homeostatic mechanisms that maintain the concentration of this cation within strict limits essential for normal physiology and metabolism. There is also considerable accumulating evidence to suggest alterations to some brain functions in both normal and pathological conditions may be linked to alterations in local magnesium concentration.

This book, containing chapters written by some of the foremost experts in the field of magnesium research, brings together the latest in experimental and clinical magnesium research as it relates to the central nervous system.

By the time John Bannon became Premier of South Australia in 1982, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) had changed direction dramatically from its origins, a process accelerated under the federal leadership of Gough Whitlam from 1967. Previously representative largely of the working class and intelligentsia, during the 1960s the ALP embraced the middle classes as well, due in part to the unionisation of whitecollar professions and in part to the party's strategy of broadening its base. This new constituency dominated the party leadership from the 1960s.

The election of the Whitlam Labor government in 1972 had reflected the effectiveness of the ALP's broadening strategy, as well as the political weariness of the Coalition parties that had held government for the previous 23 years. While impressive in its social and environmental reforms, including the Australian Heritage Commission Act (1974), the Whitlam government showed its lack of economic experience through a series of financial blunders and lost its parliamentary majority by 1975. Whitlam's successor as Federal Labor Leader, Bill Hayden, announced a change of tactic for the party in his ‘one great message: that Labor must achieve economic management superiority over the Liberals’ to regain office. Hayden's message became the guiding principle for the next generation of Labor leaders, from Prime Ministers Hawke and Keating to Premiers Wran, Bannon, Burke and to a lesser extent Cain, who abandoned many of the social reformist principles of their predecessors in a tough economic climate.

Abstract

The old saying “you are what you eat” is becoming increasingly important in the field of neuroscience these days. There is mounting evidence that nutritional factors are beginning to play a major role in cognitive status, or cognitive wellbeing. One of these emerging factors is magnesium (Mg2+). Although the physiological investigation of Mg2+ has a long history, its role in cognitive function is just starting to emerge. The focus of this chapter is to review the available literature on the effects of Mg2+ on cognitive function in the healthy and diseased/injured brain. In addition, data from our laboratory will be presented that has investigated the effects of Mg2+ manipulation on learning and memory tasks in rodents, as well as the ability of Mg2+ therapy to improve cognitive performance in the damaged brain.

Introduction

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a review of the literature on the role of Mg2+ in cognitive function. Although the research on this topic is generally sparse, there is an accumulating body of evidence suggesting that Mg2+ is vitally important. The role that micronutrients play in maintaining and promoting cognitive ability and neural plasticity has started to receive a good deal of attention. A recent paper has provided an excellent review on how various nutrients promote cognitive performance and neural plasticity (Gómez-Pinilla, 2008).

Abstract

Magnesium (Mg) is essential for cell functions such as transport of calcium and potassium ions, and modulates signal transduction, energy metabolism, and cell proliferation. Several studies elucidated a reduced concentration of Mg in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD), and experimentally, severe loss of dopaminergic neurons exclusively in the substantia nigra in 1-year-old rats that had been subjected to continuously low Mg intake (one-fifth of the normal level) over generations. A study conducted by the authors revealed a significant and striking effect of Mg to prevent neurite and neuron pathology, and also to ameliorate neurite pathology in a rat Parkinson disease (PD) model involving culture of ventral mesencephalic-striatal cells with 1-methyl-4-phenylpyridinium (MPP+). Mg is expected to prevent and ameriolate Parkinson's disease in cases where it would be able to cross into the brain in a suitable way.

Introduction

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a neurodegenerative disease occurring in middle-aged and aged humans characterized by clinical symptoms including tremor and rigidity (Parkinson, 1817). It has been reported that almost 90% of the patients are sporadic and 10% are familial. Sporadic PD shows neuropathological features involving the appearance of Lewy bodies (Lewy, 1912; Tretiakoff, 1919) and loss of neurons in the substantia nigra (Figures 1 and 2) and substantia innominata.

Publications

Barbera AL, Sampson WJ, Townsend GC (2009). An evaluation of head position and craniofacial reference line variation. HOMO J Comp Hum Biol 60:1–28.

Barrett MJ (1953). Dental observations on Australian Aborigines – Yuendumu, Central Australia, 1951–52. Aust Dent J 57:127–138.

Barrett MJ (1953). X-Occlusion. Dent Mag Oral Top 70: 279.Report of an exhibit at the Thirteenth Australian Dental Congress, University of Queensland, Brisbane, June 1–5, 1953.

Barrett MJ (1956). Dental observations on Australian Aborigines: water supplies and endemic dental fluorosis. Aust Dent J 1:87–92.

Barrett MJ (1957). Serial dental casts of Australian Aboriginal children. Aust Dent J 2:74.

Barrett MJ (1957). Dental observations on Australian Aborigines: tooth eruption sequence. Aust Dent J 2:217–227.

Barrett MJ (1958). Dental observations on Australian Aborigines: continuously changing functional occlusion. Aust Dent J 3:39–52.

Barrett MJ (1960). Parafunctions and tooth attrition. In: Parafunctions of the Masticatory System (Bruxism). Lipke D, Posselt U, editors. Report in: J West Soc Perio 8:133–148.

Barrett MJ (1964). Walbiri customs and beliefs concerning teeth. Mankind 6:95–100.

Barrett MJ (1965). Dental observations on Australian Aborigines. Mankind 6:249–254.

Barrett MJ (1966). Handlist of Field Collections of Recorded Music. 50, 51, 59, 64, 113, 125, 155. Canberra: Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

Barrett MJ (1968). Features of the Australian Aboriginal dentition. Dent Mag Oral Top 85:15–18.

Barrett MJ (1969). Functioning occlusion. Ann Aust Coll Dent Surg 2:68–80.

Barrett MJ (1972). Tooth wear and culture: a survey of tooth functions among some prehistoric populations. Molnar S, editor. Comment in: Curr Anthropol 13:516.

Abstract

Addiction to different substances is considered to be a psychiatric disorder. Magnesium reduces the intensity of addiction to opiates and psychostimulants (cocaine, amphetamine, nicotine, cocaine and others). It also decreases the auto-administration of cocaine and the relapse into cocaine and amphetamine intake, as well as reducing the experimental addiction to morphine, cocaine and other substances in animals. In heroin addicts, alcohol consumers and other drug abusers, the plasma and intracellular magnesium concentration is lower compared to healthy subjects. We consider that one of the mechanisms by which magnesium reduces the consumption of some highly addictive substances is its moderate effect of stimulating the reward system. However, other main mechanisms involved in magnesium's action are the reduction of dopamine and glutamate release at presynaptic terminals in the brain, the decrease of NO synthase activity, the stimulation of GABAergic system activity, the reduction of postsynaptic NMDA receptor activity, and the reduction of some neuromediators released by Ca2+ and acting at calcium channels. Apart from the action of magnesium ions during emerging addiction, administration of this cation after the appearance of withdrawal syndrome reduces the intensity of the clinical symptoms. There are data that show that stress increases the vulnerability of people to develop addiction to different substances, and also reduces drug-free time and increases the incidence of relapse in heroin addicts. Stress increases catecholamine release and stimulates magnesium release from the body. This decrease in magnesium concentration is one of the important factors that hastens relapse.

DEFINITION

Compartment syndrome is a clinical and pathological syndrome where the pressure within an anatomical tissue compartment rises above the normal physiological value for that compartment and detrimentally alters the function of the tissues either temporarily or permanently. Acute compartment syndromes affecting the abdominal cavity and the fascial compartments of the limbs are those encountered in vascular surgery.

ACUTE LIMB COMPARTMENT SYNDROME

The importance of acute limb compartment syndrome (LCS) is that, if left untreated, it results in rhabdomyolysis with resultant release of potassium, myoglobin and other toxins into the systemic circulation, which can lead to renal and/or multi-organ failure. The mortality of acute renal failure and multi-organ failure is high. These patients require critical care which may involve dialysis and other organ support. Untreated LCS often necessitates amputation to prevent further acute systemic deterioration. If the immediate insult is survived without the need for amputation a permanently disabling ischaemic contracture may result.

LCS arises due to the anatomical arrangement of muscles surrounded by restrictive, inelastic osteofascial envelopes. Increased pressure within these fascial compartments can occur as a result of extrinsic compression such as that from plaster casts or bandages, or increased volume of the contents of the compartment. The volume within the compartment can be increased as a result of enlargement of those tissues contained within the compartment (e.g.muscle oedema) or due to the presence of a pathological space-occupying mass (such as a haematoma or abscess).

The Rt. Hon. The Lord Mayor of Adelaide (JVS Bowen, Esq.), Chair

Alderman John Chappel (Architect)

Roger Cook (Colliers International, President, Building Owners and Managers Association)

Professor John Cooper (School of Architecture and Building, SA Institute of Technology)

Geoffrey Dutton, AO (Historian and Editor, Sun Books Pty. Ltd.)

Ray Harrison (Head, South Australian Heritage Unit)

Jack McConnell (Architect)

Professor David Saunders (Faculty of Architecture, University of Adelaide)

Dr Alan Spry (Senior Consultant, Australian Mineral Development Laboratories)

Dr John Tregenza (Curator, Historical Collections, Art Gallery of South Australia)

Gavin Walkley, C.B.E. (Architect and Chairman, Architects Board of S.A.)

Alderman John Watson (Deputy Lord Mayor)

Dr Derek Whitelock (Assistant Director, Continuing Education, University of Adelaide)