Events

We are engaged in an unprecedented global experiment: what happens when people and ecosystems – even in remote parts of the planet – are constantly exposed to thousands of chemical pollutants from industry, agriculture, transport and other human activities? For many recently discovered contaminants in soil, water and air, there is minimal information available on their environmental behaviour or toxicology yet significant potential to affect human health.

Meet a panel of experts building understanding of the chemistry and bioactivity of pollutants and developing safe and effective solutions to reduce their production, persistence, and impacts.

Speakers will include:

• Associate Professor Suzie Reichman
• Associate Professor Brad Clarke

The Science at Melbourne Lecture series is the premier public event series from the Faculty of Science. The event program seeks to share our knowledge and love of science with the wider community, engaging them in current research and empowering them to ask questions and act for a better world. The series runs throughout the year covering scientific research, discoveries, and theories that play exciting or unexpected roles in shaping and advancing our society.

2025 Jim Carlton Integrity Lecture

Held in conjunction with the Accountability Round Table

In light of recent exercises of the power to pardon by outgoing US president Biden and recently inaugurated President Trump, this issue is topical once more.

The rough equivalent in Australia to the power to pardon is the prerogative of mercy which is used in exceptional circumstances to temper the law by providing clemency. The prerogative, seldom used and conventionally said to protect the law’s reputation, was recently used to pardon Kathleen Folbigg after she was convicted of killing her four children, and after 20 years in gaol. In that matter, the Governor of New South Wales exercised the prerogative of mercy to grant clemency to Ms Folbigg, a person convicted of crime. This followed the recommendation by the NSW Attorney General of a pardon and the NSW Governor, Her Excellency the Honourable Margaret Beazley AC KC, accepting the recommendation.

Justice Pritchard will review the history of each of the power to pardon and the prerogative of mercy (Locke, Blackstone etc), more recent practice in relation to the exercise of each, the relationship of each to the rule of law (including the immunity of the prerogative from judicial review), and more generally political theory and executive or prerogative pardons.