News: One-person parole law enacted in Victoria

In 1996, the High Court – in arguably its most significant constitutional law decision in recent decades – struck down a NSW law providing for the continued detention of one person, Gregory Wayne Kable, ruling that a number of aspects of that law, including its one-person nature, were incompatible with the institutional integrity of state Supreme Courts required by the federal constitution. Last year, the Court revisited that case, ruling out Kable’s claim that he was falsely imprisoned under the invalid law. It seems likely that the High Court will revisit that decision in another way this year. The Victorian Parliament today enacted a Bill barring parole except in cases of permanent physical incapacity or imminent death for just one person – the ‘prisoner Julian Knight’.

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