There are some crimes where the ordinary conversation about bail becomes very difficult to understand.
Murder should surely be one of them.
On Thursday, 3 September, a 15-year-old boy charged with the alleged murder of 27-year-old Oliver Conroy was granted bail by the Children’s Court of Queensland.
He is one of seven teenagers aged between 14 and 17 charged with murder following the alleged attack on Conroy at Kelvin Grove in Brisbane on 24 July. Police allege Conroy was lured to the area using a bogus dating profile before being dragged from his vehicle, assaulted and robbed. He was then allegedly struck by his own vehicle as the group fled. Conroy died in hospital on 6 August.
Something every Australian should be questioning, while somebody is awaiting trial on an allegation this serious, should they be out in the community at all?
In our view, when the charge is murder, the answer should ordinarily be no.
The evidence discussed in court
This was not a bail application in which the court was told there was virtually no evidence connecting the teenager with what happened. According to the ABC's report of the hearing, the incident was captured on video. Judge Anthony Rafter said the footage clearly showed the 15-year-old kicking and punching Conroy, something the teenager's lawyer accepted.
Rafter described the evidence of the boy's involvement in the violent assault as “very strong if not overwhelming” and referred to an active role in a “prolonged and brutal assault”.
The court was also told an autopsy report remained outstanding, meaning prosecutors were not yet in a position to identify precisely which injuries caused Conroy's death. Judge Rafter said the murder or manslaughter case against this particular teenager therefore had only “some substance” at that stage. The teenager also had no prior criminal history. Those considerations ultimately contributed to bail being granted.
The conditions are strict. The teenager must wear an electronic monitoring device, remain under a 24-hour curfew, cannot leave home unless accompanied by his parents or a Youth Justice representative, and cannot contact co-accused or witnesses. His mother also offered a $40,000 surety.
But none of that changes the fundamental question.
He is charged with murder.
Bail is not a finding of innocence
There will inevitably be people who respond to criticism of this decision by pointing out that the boy has not been convicted.
They are correct.
The presumption of innocence is one of the most important protections in our legal system. Nobody should be treated as legally guilty simply because police have laid a charge.
But that isn't what bail is about. Being remanded in custody while awaiting trial is not supposed to be a declaration of guilt or a punishment imposed before conviction. Bail laws already recognise circumstances where the seriousness of an allegation, the strength of the evidence, the risk of further offending, interference with witnesses or failure to appear justify keeping an accused person in custody.
The argument, therefore, isn't that a murder charge proves somebody committed murder.
The argument is that murder sits at the absolute extreme end of criminal offending, and the threshold for releasing somebody accused of it should be extraordinarily high.
A person has died. The State has determined there is sufficient evidence to charge another person with causing that death. That charge carries consequences of the most serious kind imaginable.
Why, then, should the starting position still be release?
Look at what Queensland law actually says
Queensland's Youth Justice Act 1992 currently provides that when a court is deciding whether to release a child charged with an offence, it must decide to release the child unless another provision requires, or allows, that child to be kept in custody.
The court must keep a child in custody where it is satisfied there is an unacceptable risk the child will commit an offence endangering community safety and that the risk cannot adequately be dealt with through bail conditions. Other risks, including absconding, offending or interfering with witnesses, can also justify detention.
Think about that framework for a moment.
Even where an allegation is extraordinarily violent, the law remains centred around an individual assessment of whether identified risks can be managed through conditions.
An ankle bracelet.
A curfew.
Parental supervision.
A surety.
No contact orders.
For many offences, that makes complete sense. For murder, we believe the community is entitled to ask whether it still does.
What happened to putting the seriousness of the alleged violence first?
There has been a long-running debate in Australia about the balance between rehabilitation, the rights of accused people and community safety.
Sometimes it feels as though the system has become so focused on managing the accused person's risk, circumstances, age, background and prospects that the extraordinary seriousness of the alleged conduct can become just another factor on a list. We’ve seen this time and time again in other parts of the country, where the accused is released on bail, kept in the country, because it would have severe consequences to the accused’s mental health…
At some point, common sense has to enter the conversation.
If someone is accused of shoplifting, property damage or a relatively minor first offence, their lack of criminal history should obviously weigh heavily in favour of bail.
But murder?
There has to be a line.
Being a first-time offender does not somehow make an allegation of extreme violence insignificant.
In fact, it exposes one of the weaknesses in a system designed heavily around predicting future offending. If somebody has never been through the criminal justice system before, there is naturally less history available to demonstrate risk.
But when the allegation before the court involves conduct of the highest possible seriousness, should we really need a previous criminal record before detention becomes the obvious position?
We don't believe so.
Queensland already knows it has a bail problem
This isn't a concern invented because of one case. In 2024, the Queensland Audit Office examined serious youth offending and concluded that more needed to be done to reduce crime by serious repeat offenders.
The audit found that 434 serious repeat youth offenders had reoffended while on bail in March 2023. That number fell to 307 by December 2023 following legislative changes, but hundreds of serious repeat offenders were nevertheless still offending while released into the community.
The Auditor-General also found Queensland Police did not have adequate systems to track the overall number of cases in which police opposed bail and recommended stronger monitoring of bail compliance.
This is exactly why the public has become frustrated. People repeatedly hear about bail conditions after something has already happened.
A curfew was imposed.
An ankle monitor was fitted.
Police were conducting bail checks.
The accused was required to report.
These mechanisms may reduce risk. They do not eliminate it and with allegations of the most serious violence, “reduced risk” isn't good enough.
Even the Government now admits the threshold needs changing
The timing of this case is particularly striking. On 27 August, just seven days before the teenager in the Conroy case received bail, the Crisafulli Government introduced its Breach Bail, Go to Jail and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2026.
The proposed reforms would introduce a significantly tougher bail threshold for serious offending, including youth offences captured by Queensland's Adult Crime, Adult Time regime.
Under the proposal, bail would have to be refused unless the decision-maker was satisfied to a “high degree of confidence” that the accused would not commit another serious offence while on bail. The Bill would also introduce a show-cause requirement and a new offence for committing serious offences while already on bail.
As of 4 September, however, the Bill has only been introduced and referred to committee. It is not yet law.
The Government therefore already accepts the central premise: Queensland's existing bail laws aren't tough enough. Neither are the rest of the Australian States and Territories to be fair.
Murder should mean remand
Our position is straightforward.
Where a person is charged with murder, bail should not be treated as an ordinary option.
There may need to be an extremely narrow exceptional-circumstances provision because no law can sensibly anticipate every conceivable factual situation but the ordinary position should be remand until the charge is resolved or substantially altered.
That should apply whether the accused is 15, 35 or 78. It should apply whether they have ten previous convictions or none.
Age should matter when courts eventually determine culpability and sentence. A criminal history should matter when risk is assessed. But neither should erase the seriousness of a murder charge.
Queensland has already embraced the principle of Adult Crime, Adult Time for serious youth offending. If we genuinely believe that principle, it cannot begin and end at sentencing.
There is little comfort in telling the public that a child convicted of murder will eventually face serious consequences if, while charged with that same murder, our system still begins from a legislative framework favouring release wherever conditions can supposedly manage the risk.
If being charged with murder isn't enough to create a presumption that someone should remain in custody, what exactly is?
The presumption of innocence must remain. So must due process.
But protecting those principles does not require us to pretend every offence deserves the same approach to bail.
For allegations involving the taking of a human life, community safety and the extraordinary seriousness of the charge should carry substantially more weight.
