News and Events

The NSW Government has rejected a key Drug Summit recommendation to stop using drug dogs and strip searches for drug possession at music festivals during the drug-checking trial.

Police admitted to unlawfully strip-searching Raya Meredith in 2018 at Splendour in the Grass and withdrew all witnesses before court hearing.

The state government has lost a landmark case involving the illegal strip search of a woman by NSW Police at a music festival in 2018. Sydney woman Raya Meredith was awarded $93,000 in damages. The case is part of a broader class action which extends to police strip searches at music festivals from 2016.

NSW Police are facing potentially having to pay millions in damages following a landmark ruling in a strip search class action lawsuit.

Isabel was fined three times in one week in Sydney. ‘I was like, there’s been some kind of malfunction,’ she said Isabel didn’t even realise she had broken the law until three fines turned up in her mailbox. The fines – collectively worth more than $1,200 and nine demerit points – were all for seatbelt offences within the same week in Sydney while she helped a friend move house. “I was like, there’s been some kind of malfunction. This is impossible. I always wear my seatbelt,” Isabel recalled. On viewing the picture a detection camera had snapped of her, she realised that she had in fact been fined for wearing it incorrectly – she’s only 157cm and often puts the seatbelt under her arm so it doesn’t irritate her neck. “I have since learned that is an offence,” Isabel said.

Slater and Gordon denounces NSW Police Appeal in strip search class action

Following a class action led by leading law firm Slater and Gordon and Redfern Legal Centre, a judgment was today handed down in the Supreme Court of NSW which awarded significant damages to the lead plaintiff, Raya Meredith, for an unlawful strip search undertaken by NSW Police at the Splendour in the Grass Festival in 2018.

NSW Supreme Court to deliver strip search class action judgment

An employee of Mexican fast food chain Mad Mex has received a record payout after a court found her manager sexually harassed her by showing her pornographic videos, brushing sex toys against her thigh and making sexualised comments.

New data reveals the number of juveniles in custody in New South Wales has risen by 34 per cent. Indigenous children make up for 60 per cent of the state's minors behind bars.