Leah Blyth (SA, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Defence Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak today on the Commonwealth Parole Board Bill 2025. This bill proposes a significant change to how parole decisions will be made for federal offenders in Australia. At present, parole decisions for federal offenders sit with the Attorney-General, through the Attorney-General's Department. This means that the power to decide whether some of the most serious offenders in our country are released into the community rests with an elected official who is directly responsible and accountable to the Australian parliament and ultimately to the Australian people. That system reflects a fundamental democratic principle. When a decision is made that affects public safety, the Australian people should know exactly who is responsible for that decision. There should be a clear line of responsibility between the decision and the elected official who made it. When something goes wrong, the public can hold that official responsible through parliament and ultimately through the ballot box.

This bill will dismantle that principle. Instead of parole decisions being made by the Attorney-General, this bill would hand that responsibility to a newly created Commonwealth Parole Board. This board would be an unelected body made up of appointed members who are not accountable to the Australian people in the same way that a minister of the Crown is accountable. Once this power is transferred, the direct democratic link between the decision-maker and the public disappears.

At the moment the Commonwealth is the only jurisdiction in Australia where parole decisions are made by an elected member through the Attorney-General's Department. That arrangement has always ensured that there is a clear and transparent line of responsibility. If the community has concerns about a decision, the community knows who has made it and who must answer for it. This bill will sever that line of responsibility. Instead of a minister making the decision and standing behind it, this bill will create a system whereby decisions are made by a board. When something goes wrong, the minister can simply say, 'Well, that was a decision of the board, not mine' and defer themselves from all responsibility. That will blur the lines, and accountability will become diluted.

This is not a minor administrative change. This is a fundamental shift in how responsibility is exercised in our system of government. Parole decisions are not routine administrative matters. They are serious decisions that carry real consequences for community safety. They involve weighing risk, assessing behaviour, considering victims and determining whether someone who has committed some of the most serious crimes in our country should ever be released back into the community. These decisions require judgement, responsibility and, in my view, accountability. Decisions about parole are not administrative conveniences that this government can just outsource to a board. They are moral and legal responsibilities that must have the appropriate accountability attached to them. When a government is trying to remove those accountabilities and, ultimately, the responsibility of the decision-making, it weakens the principle that power and accountability should go together.

Instead of any accountability or responsibility from this government, this bill will deliver an even bigger bureaucracy. This proposal actually represents a bigger bureaucracy. This isn't about improving the public safety. It's not about helping victims, and it's not about making the system more effective. What it does is create a brand-new government body where one did not exist before, and, whenever a new government body is created, it brings with it the full machinery of bureaucracy. There will be offices, staff, administrative structures, communications teams and management layers. There will be chairs, members, deputy members, advisers and support staff. There will be another logo, another website, another organisational chart and another growing list of positions that must be filled. And all of this will be funded by the Australian taxpayers.

The government's own costings estimate the establishment of this board at $28.3 million over the next four years. It will cost $7.3 million every single year after that. That is nearly $30 million to create a bureaucracy to duplicate a function that already exists within government. Let's be honest, when a government says to the Australian people, 'We estimate this is going to cost $30 million,' you can pretty well bank on tripling it for what the true cost will be. This is a significant amount of taxpayer dollars to spend to simply move a decision from a minister, elected by the Australian people and accountable to the Australian people, to a new board and boardroom. Australians expect—and rightly so—that their taxes will be spent on improving services, strengthening communities and protecting our country. They do not expect millions of dollars to be put into bureaucratic structures that replicate work that is already being done.

Government agencies rarely shrink. I don't think I've ever known of one that has. They expand. They will add new units, new functions, new committees and new advisory groups to this board. We can see that $30 million eventually expanding and becoming hundreds of millions of dollars in years to come. That's not efficient government, and it's certainly not a responsible use of taxpayer dollars.

State and territory parole boards already exist across Australia and operate with cooperative arrangements for the Commonwealth and federal offenders who are involved. These arrangements allow the Commonwealth to work with existing state systems without the need to establish an entirely new federal bureaucracy. Creating a separate Commonwealth board risks duplicating those existing structures. Instead of simplifying a system, it will add yet another layer of administration. Instead of improving coordination, it will introduce an additional complexity. Instead of clarifying responsibility, it will spread responsibility across multiple bodies meaning that no-one will ever be held responsible or accountable for the decisions that are made.

When a decision about parole is made today, the Attorney-General stands behind that decision. The public knows who made the call and who must answer for it. Under this new system, that clarity will disappear. If something goes wrong—if a dangerous offender is released and reoffends—the response will be predictable. Ministers will say that the decision was made by the board and that the board acts independently. In other words, responsibility will be passed away from those elected to lead. Victims and the Australian public deserve better than that.

The appointment process for this board raises even further concerns. Under this bill, the government of the day will appoint the members of the board. That means the government will have the power to determine who sits on the body responsible for making these crucial decisions. Yet the bill contains very few meaningful safeguards to prevent political stacking. There are no strong mechanisms to guarantee that appointments will be purely based on expertise, experience or qualifications, and, without such safeguards, there is always the risk that positions will be filled based on political considerations rather than professional merit.

Public confidence in the parole system depends on trust, and Australians must believe that the decisions are being made fairly and responsibly and are based on sound judgement. If there is even a perception that appointments to the board are being made on political grounds, then that trust will erode.

The bill also states that the board should reflect as closely as possible the composition of the Australian community. At first glance, this may sound like a very reasonable clause to include in the bill. But, when you look at it more closely, what exactly does that requirement mean? Does it refer to geography? Does it refer to gender? Does it refer to ethnicity? Does it refer to age or background? The bill does not define it. It is vague, it is unclear and it is impossible to measure. And, more importantly, it introduces considerations that have very, very little to do with legal qualifications. The board, as set up, will be making decisions on whether some of the most dangerous convicted criminals in Australia should be released on parole into our community. If the wrong decision is made, community safety will be at risk. But this board is going to comprise those who reflect the Australian community as closely as possible, rather than those with actual qualifications to be members of this board. Parole decisions should be made based on professional expertise, legal knowledge, corrections experience and the ability to assess the risk that is posed in the wider community. The focus should always be on qualifications, judgement and experience. Public safety decisions should not become a social representation exercise.

These cases involve the very extremes of serious offending in our country. These offenders include individuals who've been convicted of terrorism offences, child exploitation offences, people smuggling, cybercrime and organised criminal activity. Many of these cases involve complex investigations, sensitive intelligence information and matters that intersect with national security. These are by no means routine matters. They require careful judgement and a deep understanding of the broader security environment.

The Attorney-General is supported by the resources of government and by the national security agencies. They are well positioned to assess these risks. Removing the responsibility from the Attorney-General and placing it into the hands of an external board risks weakening that assessment process. It will create greater distance between those who hold the intelligence and those who make the decision.

Everything in this bill will weaken the principle of responsible government, and I think this bill seeks to undermine wider community safety here in Australia. For those reasons, we will not be supporting this bill.

Slade Brockman (WA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the Commonwealth Parole Board Bill 2025. I wasn't actually planning to speak on this bill. I only made the decision to rise on this bill after hearing members of the government and the Greens speak on it, because I think there is a really important point at stake here. We heard from those opposite and those at the end of the chamber that state governments, in particular, have moved to this independent bureaucratic approach to parole boards. Whilst that's not universally true, it is true particularly in the larger jurisdictions. But—as I think Senator Scarr, who is sitting in front of me, would know—in Queensland, as well as in New South Wales and in Victoria, there have been severe problems with those independent bureaucratic parole boards over the years, and there has been significant evolution of those independent parole boards over the years. The mistakes of their initial formulation have become apparent over time, and corrections were made.

The trouble with the approach the government is bringing to the table is that it has not taken on those learnings. It has not taken on the fact that there are problems with the approach that was initially developed over 20 years ago, in terms of independent parole boards. We've seen in all three of those jurisdictions—Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria—a severe loss of trust at various times with the independent parole board process because their approach failed in various respects.

Principally, I think, that is in terms of failing the victims. In the way the process was originally formulated, victims had no means to be informed about the process of parole or about when parole was potentially going to become available. They had no way of feeding their views into that process. So you had a situation where decisions were being made and those who were most impacted by the decision, the victims of the original crimes, had no role. This was a problem that was repeated in multiple jurisdictions across Australia—in Queensland, in New South Wales and in Victoria—and had to be addressed.

Yet, even with that learning and experience, for whatever reason, it was decided that that was not going to be a part of this bill. You have victims of serious crimes—Senator Blyth just outlined the kinds of crimes that are covered under federal law and would be covered under a federal independent parole board of the sort outlined in this bill—who carry the burden of those crimes for the rest of their lives. There are families who carry the burden of those crimes for the rest of their lives. Yet, in formulating this bill, the government has taken no account of the very clear and necessary ability for victims' families to be informed as to timing and likely outcomes or to feed into the process and provide their own view on the matter of parole. That, in and of itself, is enough of an oversight to say, 'Back to the drawing board.' That, in and of itself, is enough to say, 'It's time we actually take this off the table, take this back to the drawing board and start to look at it again.'

There are checks and balances in the current system. The first law officer has the responsibility in the current system of approving paroles, and that is as it should be. If you're going to move on from the system, you should, at the very least, have an improvement.

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Brockman, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but, it being 1.30, we shall move to two-minute statements.