Commonwealth Parole Board Bill 2025, Commonwealth Parole Board (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025
Senator SHOEBRIDGE (New South Wales) (11:21): I rise on behalf of the Greens to indicate we'll be supporting the Commonwealth Parole Board Bill 2025, and we are very much looking forward to an independent Commonwealth parole authority. If we only needed one reason to support this bill, the reason I'd give would be David McBride. David McBride is a political prisoner in Australia who is in jail under a Commonwealth offence—a breaching secrecy offence—for telling the truth about war.
David McBride, in the next 12 months, will come up for parole. I can tell you what I don't want to see happen. I don't want to see David McBride, as a political prisoner, have his parole application decided by an attorney-general—a politician from any one of the war parties.
I don't want that to happen. I want to see an independent parole board actually look at the merits not just of David's parole application but of every parole application from anyone who's in jail for breaching a Commonwealth offence. I've heard some pretty remarkable contributions in this chamber, but I have rarely seen one stray so far from reality as the one we heard from the shadow Attorney-General, Senator Cash, yesterday.
Senator Cash suggested that having an independent statutory parole board at a Commonwealth level was some kind of political smokescreen, some terrible lack of accountability and a wicked political ploy from the Labor government to avoid accountability for parole decisions. She suggested that it was indicative of a collapse in political standards that we're finding, and she suggests that it would be an incredibly dangerous thing for community safety.
As I said, rarely have I heard a speech stray so far from reality than that contribution from Senator Cash, and I haven't really done it justice. There was invective and passion that she also added to her attack on this bill. But what Senator Cash forgot to say was that every other jurisdiction in this country has a parole board, every state and every territory has an independent parole board.
The UK and the overwhelming bulk of jurisdictions across the world that follow a common-law tradition like us have independent parole boards. That is because the public expects decisions about criminal justice, about whether people go in jail or stay in jail, not to be decided by politicians but to be decided by independent bodies. In fact, our constitution requires that at a Commonwealth level.
Courts making decisions about criminality and then independent parole boards making decisions about whether people should be released once their minimum sentence time has been reached—that's what happens across the Commonwealth. We then saw the shadow Attorney-General say this is outrageous because an independent statutory parole board will be making decisions about people who have committed serious Commonwealth offences such as terrorism, child abuse.
They are incredibly serious criminal offences. The Greens believe that whether or not someone gets parole should be decided by an independent statutory body, not by a politician. But again, what the shadow Attorney-General, who wants to be the Attorney-General in the future—a frightening thought that we would revisit that past—and the coalition forgot to mention was that, at a state and territory level, parole boards in their daily work across this country are deciding whether or not people who have been convicted of manslaughter, serious sexual assault, serious—even state based—terror offences, some of the most appalling crimes you can imagine get parole.
They are doing it without the involvement and without a political veto from politicians at a state and territory level. That's how the public would expect our criminal justice system to work. We currently have at a Commonwealth level—the only jurisdiction in the country—a politician in the form of the Attorney-General who can pretty much pluck any parole decision away from the bureaucrats in their office and make a political decision on parole.
That is an incredibly dangerous political role in what is meant to be an apolitical criminal justice system. How it works in practice is the Attorney-General delegates the bulk of the parole decision-making to bureaucrats inside the Attorney-General's office. That is another thing the coalition forgot to mention—that, under their preferred model, the overwhelming bulk of Commonwealth parole decisions under the status quo are not even made by a politician but are just made by bureaucrats in the office with no statutory controls, no statutory independence; you don't even know who is making the parole decisions.
They are nameless bureaucrats whose careers depend on keeping in favour with the secretary—whose career depends on keeping in favour with the Attorney-General. That is the current Commonwealth parole system. If the coalition had been honest about wanting nameless, faceless bureaucrats who owe their careers to the secretary—who owes their career to the AG—to be the ongoing parole system for the Commonwealth, they should be honest and talk about it truthfully.
What does this bill do? It creates an independent parole board which will have people appointed to it based on relevant expertise. Parole is really hard.
I can tell you now, having spoken with people who have been on parole boards in my home state of New South Wales, members of statutory parole boards take their jobs incredibly seriously. They look at the evidence about the offence. They look at a person's record inside the criminal justice, rehabilitation programs they have or haven't done, their stated intention.
They can consult most times with victims and they inform victims of decisions being made. Senator Scarr: They don't have to under this. Senator SHOEBRIDGE: I will get to the guidelines in due course.
They do that in a respectful way. I can tell you now, not every victim, not every survivor, wants to be part of a parole decision. Many victims and survivors want that to be dealt with by an independent statutory body, and they want emotional and psychological distance from the decision being made.
But some do want to be involved. They want their hurt, their pain, their experience to be before the Parole Board. Allowing that voice on parole to be heard should be and needs to be part of an effective parole system.
But it's part of an array of complex material, including, as I said, the nature of the offence, the response by the person seeking parole to their time in prison, evidence from the corrections authorities, evidence from psychologists and sometimes evidence about a person's basic record inside the corrections system—a complex series of facts and expert evidence that is best assessed by an independent board, an independent body, not by a politician who's doing it on a part-time basis for political reasons and not by a nameless, faceless bureaucrat who isn't controlled by any identifiable guidelines or controls.
I've got to tell you an independent parole board will be significant, especially for some parts of the community—for example, First Nations people in federal custody. They deserve a fair and impartial process, not to have their parole decision decided by a coalition attorney-general or a Labor attorney-general. They deserve, as I think all people deserve, a pathway through the criminal justice system that is based upon the merits of the matter, not the politics of the matter.
It has been a longstanding recommendation at a federal level, going back five decades, for the Commonwealth to establish an independent parole board. It's been a recommendation from multiple parliamentary committees and from the ALRC, the Australian Law Reform Commission, and it's about time it happened. We did have concerns with the initial draft presented to us by the government.
We had concerns that clause 24 of the bill allowed the departmental secretary to sit on the board when the chair or the acting chair was unavailable. The Greens firmly believe that a parole board should be genuinely independent from the government of the day, and a departmental secretary who owes their job and their political future to the attorney-general and the government of the day is not independent; they're a part of the executive government.
As drafted, that clause significantly undermined the board's independence from the government of the day. I am very grateful for the assistance we've had from the Law Council, their detailed submissions and their detailed engagement with the bill, including on this issue about the independence of the parole board. I am glad that we've been able to reach an agreement with the government for an amendment to clause 24 which will remove the secretary's role and will instead put in place an arrangement where an acting chair can be appointed, to ensure that there's the independence of the parole board.
We have had a series of submissions, and there will be a series of amendments being moved, which are proposing to put in express provisions about how the parole board should operate. Save for the coalition's amendments, the amendments that are being brought forward by other senators, I think, are coming from a good place. They are, for example, suggesting that natural justice needs to be applied by the parole board, they are proposing that the parole board must conduct interviews before making a parole decision, and there have been propositions that we should expand the jurisdiction of the parole board to also include reconsiderations.
I understand, and the Greens understand, where these amendments come from. But can I say, on the amendment that would require the parole board to conduct interviews, that that may be good, and I and the Greens believe that would be essential if the parole board is intending to refuse parole, but there would be many circumstances where a parole board might be well satisfied to give a grant of parole without an interview, and you wouldn't want to limit the ability to do that.
I would hope, and the Greens would expect, that that kind of process would be adopted in the guidelines once the parole board is up and running. But, as currently drafted, that amendment would potentially prevent some people who are entitled to and worthy of parole from getting parole in a timely fashion. As to the amendment proposing the rules of procedural fairness, again, we understand the effect of that and the intent of that.
The common law makes it clear that people have a right of procedural fairness in decisions such as those of the parole board. And, under common law, unless there's some statutory statement to the contrary, there is a right of procedural fairness, which will be part of the parole board as established. For that reason, we don't believe it is necessary to include that statement in the legislation, because it's implicit in the board as established under existing Commonwealth principles.
And, of course, the guidelines would not be able to limit the right as to procedural fairness. They might be able to articulate how it occurs, but they would not be able to remove the right to procedural fairness. I'll say, finally, on the issue of victims: I would expect the guidelines to include the role for victims that I've articulated in this speech on the second reading—the rights of victims to be advised; the rights of victims, if they wish, to have their voice heard in a parole decision.
I believe that we will see that, in these guidelines—and it will be a significant improvement from the current system, that the coalition are trying to defend, where there are no rights for victims and they are not engaged with, they are not heard, unless a politician decides it's in their political interests to do so. We want to depoliticise the criminal justice system.
We want experts, well qualified and independent, to decide parole, not politicians. And we support the bill.