On International Wrongful Conviction Day, Australia still leaves prisoners to overcome an almost impossible barrier when challenging unsafe convictions.

On International Wrongful Conviction Day, it is timely to remind our attorneys-general how far Australia lags behind in recognising and responding to miscarriages of justice.

For 30 years, the United Kingdom has had an independent mechanism for evaluating claims of wrongful conviction for serious crimes: a Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), in one form for England, Wales and Northern Ireland and another form for Scotland. Each has the power to independently review and investigate claims of wrongful conviction and, if it believes there are valid grounds, to refer the case back to the relevant court for a new appeal.

The bar to be cleared differs: in Scotland the standard that the CCRC must meet is that there ‘may have been a miscarriage of justice and that it is in the interests of justice that a referral be made’; in England it is that ‘there is a real possibility that the Court of Appeal will quash the conviction’.

The value of both CCRCs has been well demonstrated. Prior to the establishment of the English one, the home secretary (for our purposes, the equivalent to an attorney-general) referred on average four to five cases per year back to the Court of Appeal. Since the CCRC began operations in 1997, on average, it has referred 25 to 30 cases annually, with 70 per cent of appeals being successful.

While the CCRC model has now been embraced by Canada, Norway and New Zealand, Australia has not followed, despite repeated calls from retired senior judges and eminent legal academics. A proposal for a CCRC was considered by the South Australian Parliament in........

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