About: Legal advice including Roadside Drug Testing and Medicinal Cannabis. From strip searches at festivals and your friendly sniffers dogs, to medical cannabis being the only prescribed medicine which makes it illegal to drive, please come on a journey into many cruel and unusual laws running rampant in contemporary Oz.
Speakers: Steve Bolt and David Heilpern
Steve Bolt
Steve has been a practising solicitor since 1991, and is closely involved in the drug policy debate, particularly in regard to the regulation of medicinal cannabis. He worked for several years at Redfern Legal Centre. From 1996 to early 2004, he was the principal solicitor at the Northern Rivers Community Legal Centre. Steve is the author of Rough Deal, a plain English book about the NSW drug laws. He is also the author of a number of other publications on drug laws and drug policy. He has been the unofficial lawyer for the Nimbin Hemp Embassy for the last twenty years.
David Heilpern
Dean of Law, Southern Cross University
David Heilpern was appointed as a Magistrate in 1998, and was at the time the youngest magistrate in Australia. He ‘retired’ in May 2020. He sat in the criminal, mining, family, industrial, coronial and children’s jurisdictions of the Local Court, and was the Senior Civil Magistrate for five years. During his time on the bench, David was the principal educator for new magistrates throughout Australia and the Pacific and made several important reported decisions on criminal, environmental and evidence law.
Prior to his appointment, David was a litigation lawyer on the North Coast where he co-founded the law school at Southern Cross University in 1992, subsequently teaching in a range of subjects including constitutional law, criminal law and procedure and contracts. At the time, it was the first non-metropolitan law school in Australia.
David maintained a litigation practice throughout this time, representing a wide range of defendants including high profile clients North East Forrest Alliance and Nimbin Hemp. During this time David graduated with a Masters in Law from SCU and was pronounced the Alumni of the Decade for the University in 2005.
David has authored or co-authored four published books, refereed journal articles on a range of legal and judicial topics, and is a prize-winning short story writer and poet. He regularly speaks at practical law conferences in Australia and internationally on advocacy, criminal law and courtcraft.
In August 2022, David was appointed as Dean of Law at SCU and his writing and research is now focussed on victim’s rights, drug law reform, aboriginal over-representation in the criminal justice system and environmental activism.
