MULTIPLE MURDERERS —
PAROLE
65. Hon MICHAEL MISCHIN to the Leader of the House representing
the Attorney General:
I refer to the Attorney General's
answers to my question without notice 24 of 13 February 2019.
(1) In part (5)
of the Attorney General's answer to my question about whether he had
received submissions to extend the operation of the Sentence Administration
Amendment (Multiple Murderers) Act 2018 to other murderers, in which he claims
he has not received any ''formal submissions of this nature'',
what does he mean by ''formal submissions''?
(2) Has the
Attorney General received any submissions, formal, informal or otherwise, to
extend the operation of the act to other murderers; and, if so, how many, when
and from whom, and what has been his response?
(3) Has the
Attorney General considered the cases of multiple murderers Douglas John Edward
Crabbe, David Masters and James Alexander Tilbury; and, if not, why not, and
when will he do so?
(4) Why has the
Attorney General, in the interests of comforting secondary victims of their
cases well before they are due for consideration, not directed the suspension
of the parole of Crabbe, Masters and Tilbury?
Hon SUE
ELLERY replied:
I thank the honourable member for
some notice of the question.
(1)–(2) Although the Attorney General has not received any
formal submissions or proposals seeking to expand the operation of the Sentence
Administration Amendment (Multiple Murderers) Act 2018, he receives a volume
of correspondence from victims of crime,
including secondary and related victims. The Attorney General's
office responds to each letter received from a victim of crime and addresses in
its responses the matters raised. To go
through the office's correspondence system to determine whether the
Sentence Administration Amendment (Multiple Murderers) Act 2018 has been
raised would be an unreasonable diversion of resources. A search of the office's
correspondence system for ''parole'' since the bill was
introduced into Parliament revealed that one person wrote to the Attorney
General on 21 October 2018 seeking to convince him that ''all murderers
should stay in jail for the rest of their natural lives''.
(3)–(4) The
Attorney General is currently considering the cases of Douglas John Edward
Crabbe, David Masters and James Alexander Tilbury.