On Tuesday afternoon (Sept. 15, 2026), it took the Supreme Court’s Justice Estcourt less than an hour (a millisecond in law time) to extinguish the Tasmanian Parole Board’s restrictive parole condition that would have prevented Sue Neill-Fraser from proclaiming her innocence.
Justice Estcourt’s decision appears to have treated the Parole Board’s latest speech restriction as invalid because the Board had no lawful basis for imposing that condition in the circumstances, and because the condition impermissibly burdened political communication. The particularly significant point is that the condition was not merely struck down as “too broad”: the Board’s decision-making process itself was defective, including reliance on material that was not properly established as part of the Board’s lawful reasoning.
A huge media scrum was waiting outside the court for the outcome of the hearing, which was initiated by the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC) in April 2025, arguing that this condition preventing Sue from speaking to the media and third parties is unreasonable, improper and in breach of the constitutionally implied freedom of political communication.
The HRLC argued that the gag order was invalid on the grounds that its conditions were “intolerably uncertain”; that it was legally unreasonable being based on an account of the law which does not exist, and that the Parole Board failed to afford Ms Neill-Fraser procedural fairness when it twice met without her knowledge.
The Parole Board was further humiliated when it was discovered that a key case authority presented by the Justice Department was a hallucination invented by artificial intelligence.
Sue Neill-Fraser said in a statement outside the court: “I would like to emphasise that in challenging the parole order it has never been my intention to cause anguish or distress to others,” she said.
“I have always maintained my innocence. I am continuing in the quest to clear my name and to advocate for the broader issue of wrongful convictions in Australia. I cannot walk away from this.
“I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to the Human Rights Law Centre and the barristers who have worked tirelessly on this matter. I am so grateful for all of the support that I have received from countless people.”