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High Profile Cases: Home

Getting started

Use the following links to information sources as a platform to extend your own research about one of the following Australian legal cases. If the link takes you to the EBSCO sign in page, you will need to ask the library staff or your teacher for the username and password. If you are at school you can find the username and passwords in public drive\Library\database passwords\online databases brochure or in a print copy available from the library.

Eugene Mcgee

Eugene McGee was driving a car that hit and killed cyclist Ian Humphrey in 2003 on Kapunda Road in South Australia.

The S.A. government was called upon by the media and public and the victim's family to investigate the initial lenient sentence.

Daniel Morcombe

Daniel Morcombe was abducted from the Sunshine Coast on 7 December 2003 aged 13 years old. There was a massive media interest in the case over a long period of time.

Should the Courier-Mail’s front page heading above of February 21, 2014 have forced the trial to be aborted? Should it be grounds for a sub judice contempt charge? Should it be grounds for Cowan’s appeal?

Peter Falconio

Peter Falconio was a British tourist who disappeared in the N.T. in July 2001 while travelling with his girlfriend Joanne Lees. His body was never discovered but Bradley Murdoch was convicted of his murder in 2005. While Joanne was initially portrayed as a victim, media coverage increasingly came to portray her as unemotional and cold.

Joanne Lees

Joe Hockey

An article headlined "Treasurer for sale" in 2014 published in newspapers including The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and online sparked defamation action by the Treasurer Joe Hockey.  The reports related to Mr Hockey's involvement with Liberal Party fundraising group the North Sydney Forum (NSF).

Jayant Patel

Jayant Patel, a surgeon,  was accused of gross negligence whilst working at  the Bundaberg base hospital in Queensland. Deaths of some of Dr Patel's patients led to widespread publicity in 2005 with him being dubbed 'Doctor Death' and a long series of court cases.

Martin Bryant (Gun Control laws)

Martin Bryant pleaded guilty to murdering 35 people and injuring 23 others in the Port Arthur massacre in 1996. He is currently serving 35 life sentences plus 1,035 years without parole in the psychiatric wing of Risdon Prison in Hobart.

Dianne Brimble

Dianne Brimble died of a drug overdose aboard a P & O cruise on 23rd September 2002. There was criticism of the tabloid media coverage of her death and the pursuit of the men identified as the perpetrators of this crime.

Jill Meagher

Jill Meagher was raped and murdered while walking home on the 22nd September 2012 by Adrian Ernest Bayley. The role of social media in this case which may have led to the prejudicing of the jury pool became a matter of concern in legal circles.

Lindy Chamberlain

Lindy Chamberlain was originally accused of killing her baby Azaria while camping at Ayers Rock in 1980. In 2012 a final inquest found that a dingo had taken the baby from the campsite and caused her death. One of the most widely broadcast murder trials in Australian history, this case is often cited as a textbook example of the miscarriage of justice (The College of Law)

Michael and Lindy Chamberlain

Mabo (Native Title Act)

Mabo v Queensland (No 2) was responsible for negating the 17th century doctrine of terra nullius and inserting native title into Australian law. By doing so, it not only rewrote the bedrock of national land law, but also acknowledged Indigenous Australians as the original inhabitants of Australia. (The College of Law)

How to create your references using the Online Referencing Generator

  • A bibliography is a list of information sources known as references which you have used in your research.
  • The Online Referencing Generator (ORG) is a web tool that automatically creates your references for your bibliography in a style known as the Harvard Author-Date System.
  • The following five steps show you how to use the ORG, step six shows you what your bibliography should look like and the website examples show you how to find the information you need in the 3 most popular website sources.
  • Click on ORG once you have looked at the five steps.
  • The link to the ORG is always available from the library webpage in the Quick Links box along with other web based research tools or in the libguides that you are using for your research.
  • Once you click on the link you are taken to a password in the top right hand corner. The password is available from the library staff or your teacher.
  • Click on the Let's begin tab on the Middle School Bibliography option as shown below.

 

  • From the nine major types of information sources, look for the type of information source you are using and click on the correct link for that source. 
  • If your type of source does not appear in the list, click on the Senior Level options.

 

 

  • For example : If you have a printed book with one author click on the first choice from the Book - printed source OR if you have a website without a author click on the fifth choice from the Website source.

 

  • Once you have clicked on your information source the screen below comes up with fields based on your choice of information source.
  • In this example you would fill in the following fields with the information from a printed book with an author.
  • You will always need to use capital letters for proper nouns (name of a person, place, or thing) as this is the only formatting the ORG does not automatically do.
  • If you choose a website as your information source you will need to fill in a field called Sponsoring body. Look at your website and locate who published the page as your sponsoring body.
  • Click on Create Reference once all the fields are filled in.

  • The reference will appear similar to the example below.
  • Highlight, copy and paste your reference into your own file either on your USB or on your student drive.
  • Choose “merge formatting” from paste options to maintain all correct formatting including italics.
  • The ORG formats and punctuates your reference automatically.
  • REMEMBER once you have all your references for your bibliography, put them into alphabetical order by author or by organisation or by title. If it is a title ignore 'A', 'An' or 'The' at the beginning of the title and put it into alphabetical order by the second word. 

  • Your bibliography is usually handed up as a separate page or slide (in a powerpoint) and attached to your assignment.
  • Click here to go to the ORG.
  • This is an example of a completed bibliography. Notice the heading and the references are in alphabetical order by the first word :

Bibliography

Eastwood, K 2004, Women and girls in the Middle Ages, Crabtree, New York.

Medieval Lords 2014, Medieval Life and Times, accessed 3 May 2015, <http://www.medieval-life-and-times.info/medieval-life/medieval-lords.htm>.

 

What is in text referencing?

  • Within the text of your assignment you must acknowledge the author/authoring body or the title of the information source, the date it was published and the page numbers (if known) you are using.

Why do you need to reference?

  • Referencing is used to acknowledge that an idea, image (or the exact words) used within a piece of writing (or non-written text) is that of another person.
  • Referencing shows respect for other people’s intellectual rights and avoids plagiarism.
  • In-text referencing is used to support the information you use in your assignments.

What are the two types of in-text references?

  • You can either use the author's direct words (direct quote) written within quotation marks OR a summary of their ideas (indirect quote).

What is included in a in-text reference?

  • For either a quote or a indirect quote you use the author's surname or authoring body or title of the information source, date and page number (from where you have obtained the quote or the idea if you can) in round brackets. For example (Smith 2016) or (Smith 2016, pg. 5). Notice there isn't a comma between the name and the date and if there is a page number, follow the date by a comma pg. number and close the round bracket followed by a full stop.

What is a reference list?

  • A reference list includes the quotes and indirect quotes you have used in your assignment and is created on a separate sheet and attached to your assignment.
  • Use the Online Referencing Generator to generate your references which are put into alphabetical order under the title Reference List.

Use the word document below In text reference table to organise and keep track of your in text references.

The included PDF What technological devices are used to detect volcanoes has several in-text reference examples and a Reference List to help you use and understand in-text referencing.

  • Intext references highlighted in yellow are indirect quotes (summary of the author's idea)
  • The intext reference highlighted in blue is a direct quote (the ... (three dots) are used if you do not want to include the entire sentence)
  • The intext reference highlighted in grey is a reference to a figure (diagram) (start from figure 1 and continue numerically)

 

For more information about Footnotes click here