Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Parole Board Bill 2025 and the associated Commonwealth Parole Board (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2025. These bills go to the heart of one of our most serious responsibilities as legislators and that is protecting the Australian people. They ask a simple but profound question: who should have the authority and the accountability for deciding when convicted criminals are released back into the community? The Albanese government's answer is to hand that responsibility to an unelected board of so-called independent experts. Our answer on this side of the House is clear: those decisions must remain the responsibility of the Attorney-General, an elected minister who is directly accountable to the Australian people.

The coalition will oppose these bills because they weaken ministerial accountability, they increase risk to community safety and they create another costly and unnecessary bureaucracy. At present the Attorney-General is the decision-maker for parole in relation to federal offenders. That arrangement has served Australia well. It provides ministerial oversight, democratic accountability and clear responsibility for decisions that have life-and-death consequences for the Australian community. But now Labor wants to change that. This bill seeks to create a new statutory body, the Commonwealth Parole Board, which will take over those responsibilities from the Attorney-General. The government argues this change is necessary to depoliticise parole and to bring the Commonwealth into line with the states and territories, which already have their own independent parole boards.

Let's be clear about what this bill really does. It removes accountability from an elected minister who answers to the public and gives it to a group of appointed officials who answer to no-one. That is not independence; that is avoidance. The Commonwealth Parole Board Bill 2025 establishes an independent statutory authority called the Commonwealth Parole Board. The board will be made up of a chair, a deputy chair and at least three sessional members appointed by the Governor-General on the recommendation of the Attorney-General for terms of up to five years. Its stated purpose is to make independent, risk-informed decisions about the conditional release and management of federal offenders and other detainees. It will replace the Attorney-General as the primary decision-maker for parole. The bill gives the board the power to grant, refuse, amend or revoke parole orders, to interview offenders and victims and to obtain information from relevant agencies. It also allows the board to share information with law enforcement, national security agencies and other jurisdictions as required. The government claims this will bring transparency, consistency and expertise to parole decisions, but what it actually brings is confusion cost and a loss of ministerial control.

There's an associated bill in relation to the substantive bill. As I referred to earlier, it's called the Commonwealth Parole Board (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill. It makes consequential amendments to the Crimes Act 1914 to support the establishment and operation of the new board. It transfers existing powers and responsibilities from the Attorney-General and the Commonwealth Parole Office to the new body and sets out procedural changes for making, amending and rescinding parole orders. It also includes transitional provisions to manage the handover of existing cases.

While the coalition acknowledges the administrative intent of the companion bill, we cannot support the legislation that implements a deeply flawed model. The problem is not the mechanics of transition; it is the fundamental shift in accountability that the main bill represents. The coalition opposes the substantive bill because it removes accountability from the executive and weakens community confidence in the justice system. Under this legislation, if the parole board makes a catastrophic error, if a convicted terrorist, child sex offender or organised crime figure is released and reoffends, the Attorney-General will simply point to the board and say, 'It was their decision.' That, to the coalition, is unacceptable. Public safety is too important to be delegated away.

The coalition believes that with power must come responsibility, and with responsibility must come accountability. These bills fail that basic test. The government has included in this bill a statement that public safety will be the board's paramount consideration. But we've all seen how those words can be meaningless when bureaucracy replaces responsibility. We know from experience that parole boards get it wrong, and they get it wrong often. Every Australian jurisdiction has seen tragic cases where offenders released on parole have gone on to commit violent crimes. Each time, the public is left asking the same question: how could this happen? Under this bill, when that happens at the federal level, there will be no clear answer as to accountability. There will be no minister standing in this place to explain. There will be no transparency or accountability to the Australian people. It's just another arms-length body, another annual report, another government shifting the blame. That is not leadership.

The Attorney-General, as the first law officer of the Commonwealth, has a unique responsibility for safeguarding the rule of law and protecting the Australian public. I acknowledge my good friend the member for Berowra for his efforts when he held the portfolio before I did and for the outstanding job he did as well.

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