Just days before the August 31 Supreme Court hearing a challenge by the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) to an extra bail restriction imposed on Sue Neill-Fraser in April 2025 preventing her claiming her innocence, the Tasmanian Parole Board has removed that condition.
“This is great news and heartfelt thanks go to Sue’s stellar legal team who have worked tirelessly on this for many months,” says Rosie Crumpton-Crook, President of the Sue Neill-Fraser Support Group.
The Tasmanian Parole Board will be asked on what grounds it imposed this unlawful condition, why it removed it many months after the restriction was first challenged by the HRLC only on the eve of the Supreme Court hearing and whether the restriction was imposed at the request of any outside party.
The HRLC has issued the following media release.
Media Release
Human Rights Law Centre | For immediate release: Tuesday 25 August 2026
Tasmanian Parole Board removes condition restricting Susan Neill-Fraser’s speech
Following a legal challenge by the Human Rights Law Centre, the Tasmanian Parole Board has today removed a parole condition which sought to prevent Tasmanian grandmother, Susan Neill-Fraser, from speaking to third parties, including media, about her claimed innocence or wrongful conviction.
The Centre’s challenge, filed in April 2025 in the Tasmanian Supreme Court, argues that this condition preventing Susan from speaking to the media and third parties is unreasonable, improper and in breach of the constitutionally implied freedom of political communication.
The Human Rights Law Centre welcomes this decision, which restores Susan’s ability to exercise her rights to freedom of expression and participate in public debate.
Parole is intended to support people to reintegrate into the community after time spent in prison. The Human Rights Law Centre remains concerned by the largely unchecked powers of parole boards throughout the country which impose restrictive parole conditions that prevent people’s full participation in the community. Restrictive parole conditions have a disproportionate impact on already marginalised groups who are overrepresented in the criminal legal system.
The case will return to the Supreme Court of Tasmania on Monday 31 August at 10am.
Quotes attributable to Sarah Schwartz, Legal Director at the Human Rights Law Centre:
“This decision is an important vindication of Susan’s rights, which we have fought to protect for more than a year. We welcome the decision of the Parole Board of Tasmania to remove this condition. Freedom of expression is a fundamental right, and we are pleased that Susan is no longer subject to a restriction that prevented her from being able to participate in public debate.”
“The right to speak out and participate in public debate is foundational to a healthy democracy. People who have experienced incarceration are often among the most important voices in discussions about the criminal legal system and protecting their ability to speak out and advocate for change is an important safeguard against injustice.”
“We are concerned by the largely unchecked powers of parole boards across the country to impose restrictive conditions that limit people’s fundamental freedoms and full participation in the community. Parole is meant to be about supporting reintegration, not silencing people or excluding them from public debate.”
Background
Susan Neill-Fraser served 13 years in prison and has been on parole since 2022.
In December 2024, the Tasmanian Parole Board placed a condition on Susan’s parole which prohibited her from communicating “directly or indirectly with any media outlet to claim [her] alleged innocence and/or wrongful conviction”.
In May 2025, this condition was replaced with a condition which prohibits her from communicating “directly or indirectly – including through third parties, written statements, electronic communications, social media platforms, television, radio, podcasts, streaming services, online video-sharing platforms, or any other public or broadcast media – to assert claims regarding your alleged innocence, wrongful conviction, or dispute the legitimacy of your conviction or sentencing”.
Garry and Andrew are both pointing to something that I think deserves much more attention here; the timing and provenance of the condition.
This wasn’t a condition imposed when Sue was released on parole in October 2022. According to the original parole decision, the special conditions were electronic monitoring, a mental health plan and a prohibition on contacting a named person. The restriction on talking about her alleged innocence appeared more than two years later, in December 2024, and was then replaced by an even broader restriction in May 2025.
That raises a question which is arguably more important than whether the wording of the condition was too broad: What changed between October 2022 and December 2024 that caused the Board to decide that Sue’s public statements about her conviction had suddenly become a matter for parole supervision?
And, more importantly, what evidence was before the Board when it made that decision?
If the justification was risk management, where is the demonstrated risk? If it was concern about victims’ families, why was a blanket prohibition on discussing innocence or wrongful conviction necessary? If it was concern about public order or rehabilitation, what evidence connected those things to Sue speaking publicly about her case?
Those questions matter because there is a fundamental difference between imposing a condition because of an identifiable parole-related risk and imposing one because authorities dislike, distrust or want to suppress what a parolee is saying.
There is another uncomfortable point here.
The May 2025 condition wasn’t simply a restriction on talking to journalists. It apparently attempted to prevent communication directly or indirectly, including through third parties, across virtually every conceivable medium, and prohibited Sue from asserting innocence, wrongful conviction or disputing the legitimacy of her conviction or sentence.
That last part deserves scrutiny.
A parole condition normally regulates conduct relevant to the person’s release into the community. But this condition appears to have ventured into regulating the content of a person’s opinion about the legitimacy of the justice system’s own decision.
That creates a rather extraordinary circularity:
The State convicts you. The State releases you on parole. Then, while you remain subject to State supervision, the State tells you that you cannot publicly dispute the legitimacy of the conviction that put you in prison.
If that’s really what happened, the question isn’t simply whether Sue has a right to free speech. It’s whether a system of conditional liberty can legitimately be used to require a person to accept the State’s version of her own conviction as the price of exercising her freedom in the community.
And that is where I think Garry’s chronology becomes particularly important.
Why was the condition introduced in 2024?
Why was it broadened in 2025?
Who requested or proposed it?
What material was placed before the Board?
What evidence demonstrated that Sue’s speech created a parole-related risk?
And why was the condition removed only after the legality of the decision had been put before the Supreme Court?
The Board’s withdrawal may ultimately be entirely proper. But withdrawal doesn’t answer those questions. In fact, it arguably makes them more important.
The public shouldn’t have to choose between believing the HRLC and believing the Parole Board. The proper question is much simpler:
Show us the decision-making trail. If the condition was justified, the reasons and evidence should explain why. If it wasn’t justified, then the public needs to know how such an extraordinary condition came into existence in the first place.
That, to me, is the issue that has been missing from this discussion.
The 2025 restriction looks the same to me. What am I missing here?
The big difference from the original restrictions is the added restriction that she cannot claim her innocence.
Can I also add that 7NEWS reported this matter on last night’s (Tue, 25 Aug 2026) 6:00 pm news bulletin. Unfortunately, their news report made it sound as if the ‘no speak to media’ parole condition was a part of the original parole condition, set when she was first released nearly 4 years ago.
This is not the case! The Parole Board’s decision was to grant Sue’s application for the parole, thus:
Special conditions applied:
-Electronic monitoring
-To obtain and comply with a mental health plan
-To not contact named person directly or indirectly
… the parole began on 4 October 2022. As pointed out in your article above, Andrew, after more than two years of being on parole, the Parole Board imposed a new condition on Sue’s parole (Dec 2024) … preventing her from communicating claims of innocence to any media outlets, and then, five months later, in May 2025, replaced that imposed condition, with virtually a blanket restriction on any innocence claim:
…which prohibited her from communicating “directly or indirectly – including through third parties” [and/or via any of just about all forms of communication, excepting smoke signals and/or carrier pigeons – which possibly were overlooked by the Parole Board’s drafter-of-conditions … an oversight, shall we say?]
As well as the 7NEWS report, the 7:00 pm ABC TV (Tas) News also allowed the viewer to mistakenly think that the condition being challenged by the Human Rights Centre on behalf of Neill-Fraser was one that had been set at the commencement of her parole – not so!
I only make this comment because I wouldn’t be surprised if, following these news reports, there will be those who will say, ‘Aw yeh, gets ‘er parole and now wants to argue ’bout it’. There always is someone out there, is there not?
Monday, 31 August, we’ll find out if the Tasmanian Parole Board did indeed ‘go to water’. Will we find out what the Board’s reasons were for the Dec 2024 condition? Why was that new, restrictive condition changed five months later, being replaced by the even more restrictive May 2025 condition?
And now, this last-minute collapse: Team Tasmania … an example of a convict-state mentality?
REFERENCES:
Neill-Fraser, Susan Blyth – original Parole Board decision document, for 2022 10 04
https://www.justice.tas.gov.au/paroleboard/decisions-2022/neill-fraser,-susan-blyth
Human Rights Law Centre – Media Release 2026 08 25.
https://www.hrlc.org.au/news/susan-neill-fraser-speech/
Parole Board Annual Report 2022-23 (Annexure A contains examples of standard parole conditions.
https://www.justice.tas.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/731399/Parole-Board-of-Tasmania-Annual-Report-2022-23.pdf
I cannot understand why Sue is still labelled “convicted murder” when we all know who had dunnit: it was on the front page of the Mercury, witth an eyewitness account. But Darryl Coates bullied that witness until, weeping, she retracted her evidence. The law badly failed on this case. It has been an utter scandal and should be subjected to an independent inquiry .
Parole under duress . That’s just great !!!?! What happens to lawyers when you give them viagra ? By the way this applies to Judges who are of course former lawyers., successful in ignoring Justice , Answer. “They grow taller!” Think about it. 🤣🤣
I was lucky enough to meet a couple of judges , whose hearts were probably in the right place . Otherwise I’d really be screwed up. Ha Ha !
Oh, the depths of ‘Team Tasmania’ … to force that condition on her … and to – so it seems – abandon it at the last minute. I note, that at the time of writing this, the parole board itself does not seem to have confirmed that it has withdrawn the conditon, so we have just the Human Rights Law Centre’s word that it’s been withdrawn.
Who would you rather trust, the HRLC or the Parole Board for Team Tasmania?
Yep, the abyss of Team Tasmania … scumbags, to put it mildly, the lot of them.