Legislative Council, Thursday 13 August 2026
Ms FORREST (Murchison) – Thank you, Mr President. I rise to speak on the third reading of this bill, not because I wasn’t able to commit to participate yesterday, but because I want to make it clear as to why I supported the bill into the Committee stage, but I find myself in a position unable to support it in the third reading. I absolutely acknowledge the sensitivity of this issue, the importance of this issue. I acknowledge the RSL’s contribution to this community and to the veterans they represent and the sanctity of our war memorials. Veterans deserve genuine respect and I fear this has become a politicised gesture when it could have been such a simple fix.
I listened intently to the whole debate yesterday and last evening and acknowledge this is a very serious crime and I do not diminish that in any way. I have deep respect for the members of the RSL and all those who corresponded with me during this period, including Mr John Hardy, the CEO of RSL Tasmania. I want to read a couple of parts from his correspondence that illustrates why I think this is such an important decision I’m making today.
In his email to us dated 12 August, he said:
While RSL Tasmania did not develop or put forward this bill, we have supported its intent from its early development and fully and wholeheartedly support legislation now before the Legislative Council.
Mr President, I too wholly support the intent. I want to make that really clear. He said:
We believe Tasmania must send a clear, unambiguous, unapologetic message, one that is entirely apolitical. A deliberate desecration or destruction of a war memorial is not simply an act of property damage.
Mr President, I agree wholeheartedly with Mr Hardy and other members of the RSL from my electorate and others beyond my electorate that have written to me. Mr Hardy goes on:
These memorials represent the service, sacrifice and, in far too many cases, the lives of Tasmanians who have served our nation.
Including three of my direct relatives whose names appear in Stanley, in Sheffield, and one who did return who has since passed away.
Their names also appear on a memorial at Villers‑Bretonneux in France, in a cemetery in Ypres, Belgium, which I visited, and my other grandfather, who’s buried in a Tasmanian cemetery after returning.
Mr Hardy goes on:
Deliberately damaging them is an affront not only to the physical memorial, but to the veterans, families and communities for whom these places hold profound significance.
And they do. They also hold profound significance in the battlefields of the Western Front where I sat and felt deeply moved at the care that is provided to those memorial sites and the grave sites that are scattered right across that countryside.
Mr Hardy continues:
Our cenotaphs and war memorials are sacred places of remembrance. They carry the names of Tasmanians who left their families, towns and communities to serve our nation, including many who never returned home.
There wouldn’t be anyone in this Chamber, I don’t imagine, who doesn’t have some connection with a veteran or a person who is currently serving our country.
He did make a number of other comments. I won’t read the whole piece, but further on in his email, he said: “This bill is not, in our view, about politics” and that’s exactly what it shouldn’t be. It absolutely shouldn’t be. In bold letters, he said:
It is about respect, remembrance and just as importantly, the communities that these brave men and women came from.
He went on with further information too. I agree wholeheartedly with his sentiment, with the sentiment that other RSL presidents and members have expressed to me during the passage of this bill and the development of it. In his closing statement here:
Our war memorials matter, the people they commemorate matter, their service and sacrifice matter and Tasmania will protect the places where we remember them.
And yes, indeed we should. I absolutely agree with him on that.
As I said, Mr President, I listened to the entire debate yesterday and made one brief contribution at the end, but I want to go to the core of my concern. The core of my concern is that every time parliament directs the courts to a specific outcome it impinges on the separation of powers. We need to be very careful about this and sadly, and I say sadly because it distresses me every time we do it in this place, and we have done it a few times in this place, that we use very sensitive issues to put forward minimum mandatory sentences, which makes it so much harder, and that’s why I’m standing here today to speak on this because I find it quite distressing.
We are impinging again on the separation of powers. Every time we do it, we make it even more possible for the next time, the next good argument. We should allow the courts to do their job. As I understand it, from the questions asked last night from the member for Nelson, the court officials, members of the judiciary, were not consulted on this. We know there is no evidence to support minimum mandatory sentencing having an impact on a decision to commit a crime. We know from evidence it has an adverse impact on certain members of our community. We know all this. This shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody, we know all this, and I’ve said it as have other members many times in this place. We never have, in this place, all the information available to a court to make a determination about the most appropriate sentence for that person. What we have is the power to set a standard, which is by elevating the maximum penalty. If that had been what it had done, and if those amendments had been supported yesterday, I would be supporting this bill despite some reservations. I would, but I can’t because several of those amendments, well put amendments, that took a restorative justice approach, which everyone seems to think is a really good idea, but there wasn’t the support in the Chamber to deliver it. We have missed that opportunity, and we’re directing the court in a way that is highly inappropriate.
The member for Nelson referred to the research done by our former Governor, Her Excellency Kate Warner, and I have referred to her work in the past in this place, and the member for Nelsons summary of it, in a non-academic fashion, I absolutely agree, was correct. I can’t remember the co-author, a former governor, in this work – and they found, that when a group of citizens had all the information available to them that a court had, they actually recommended lower penalties than what the court had in the same case, except in the case of serious sexual offences against children. Here we are, we’re ignoring all that and directing courts to predetermined outcomes without the information that they have, which I believe is wrong. Minimum mandatory sentencing is not supported by me, in principle, or by evidence, and as I said earlier, it’s disappointing to see populist politics and the politics of fear being used to infect such an important and sensitive issue such as this. It is deeply distressing to me, and I want every member of the RSL who may see this, read it, or hear it second hand, that I am with them on this, but I also have a principle I must uphold. I’m so disappointed to be put in this position yet again. Not on this matter with war memorials, but on other things.
This whole issue of damage to war memorial is a very sensitive matter, and the issue does deserve serious evidence-based treatment, and that is what we have sought to do through this process, but in my view have failed to complete in a satisfactory manner. I can’t support a bill that directs the court so conclusively. I can’t support a bill that fails to have included the restorative justice approach that is so critical in this. I go back to the Leader’s comment when she was in the Committee stage, talking about the young people who cut off the ears of Simpsons donkey in Scottsdale. Whilst that was not imposed by the court, I don’t think it was, but those are the sort of things that have far greater impact on a person’s decision in the future than a fine and certainly then a jail sentence.
To hear the story of that young person, now a very fine member of the community, that’s exactly what we want to happen. Even as it is, the bill doesn’t take away the courts power to do that, but it makes considerable impositions on the court. Mr President, I thank you for the opportunity to speak on this because I would have put some of these points yesterday if I had been in a position to do so.
But where we have avoided the really considered restorative justice approach that we should be using in matters such as this, as well as the capacity for the court to impose heavy penalties, large fines and potentially imprisonment, we fail.