The Medico-Legal Society of Victoria

Neither the RAF or McIndoe were prepared for the number of airmen who would arrive at the hospital nor the severity of their injuries. McIndoe, faced the monumental task of restoring not only skin but flesh, and bone structures and, rebuilding his patient’s self-esteem and will to live. In a groundbreaking approach to rehabilitation, he set out to create a therapeutic community in the hospital, and the town of East Grinstead.

Sara has worked in the medico-legal area since 1998 and she is currently the Manager, Medico-legal and Advisory Services with MDA National. In this role, she assists medical practitioners and their staff in dealing with a variety of medico-legal issues arising in practice, including medical negligence claims, complaints, coronial inquiries and other investigations.

David Gillespie is a recovering corporate lawyer, former co-founder of a successful software company, investor in several software startups and best-selling author. His book ‘Taming Toxic People’ is a practical guide to restraining the difficult person in your life, be it your boss, your spouse or a parent. It is also a serious and meticulously researched warning if we value a free and well-functioning society: if we don't understand and act to manage psychopathic behaviour, Trump is only the beginning.

Nick McKenzie has won Australia’s highest award, the Walkley, seven times. He is the most decorated journalist in the history of the Melbourne Press Club Quill awards and has twice won the press club’s highest award, the Gold Quill. His journalism has included major exposes of corruption and the abuse of power in government and policing agencies, failings in the criminal justice system, corporate corruption, human rights abuses, the abuse of disabled Australians in care homes, abuse scandals in religious organisations, the exploitation of migrant workers and doping and match fixing in sport.

Professor John Blaxland is one of the authors of a three-volume history of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) that covers its foundation in 1949 through to the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. He will speak about the themes and key observations and about the role of ASIO in countering subversion and Soviet espionage as well as protecting the secrets of Australia and its close ‘five eyes’ partners. This is a story about a key US intelligence partner and its struggles during the Cold War. It is also a story about the security and intelligence function as an arm of government and its place in society. Observations made have resonance for security challenges of today.

In May 2013, seven QUT students were using a Queensland University of Technology computer lab when QUT Administrative Assistant Cindy Prior asked them whether they were indigenous. When they replied they weren’t, Prior then asked them to leave. In February 2016 Prior sued three of the students for comments allegedly made, after she evicted them. On 4 November 2016 Federal Circuit Court Judge Michael Jarrett ruled there was no case to answer.

Current obstetric information guidelines and childbirth education models deny women true birth choice. Failure of duty to warn in obstetric negligence case law has focussed to warn of the risks of obstetric interventions. There is no case law on failure of duty to warn of the risks of vaginal birth. The health system is complicit in denying full disclosure of birth risks.