I Wouldn't Let Them Break Me

Debbie Kilroy’s journey from criminal to lawyer has earned her an Order of Australia. But Susan Chenery finds this feisty advocate will never forget her sisters inside.

- Susan Chenery

When the great American civil rights activist, Professor Angela Davis, arrived in Brisbane in 2001 for her first visit to Australia, she wondered what she had gotten herself into. There, waiting at the airport, was a “fast-talking white woman with blonde hair who drove a black pick-up truck. I couldn’t understand what she was saying.”

Angela had been invited to meet Sisters Inside, an advocacy group for women prisoners founded by the aforementioned blonde powerhouse, Debbie Kilroy. “There was something about the email she sent me,” Angela recalls. “Debbie is one of the most remarkable people I have met on this planet.”

Angela is not the only person of note who has been bowled over by Debbie Kilroy. She’s now a lawyer and a powerful advocate for women in prison, but Debbie’s life could have played out very differently.

When Debbie arrived at Brisbane’s Banco Court to be admitted as a lawyer in 2007, she was accompanied by supporters who were well acquainted with the legal system – and not in a good way. It was by no means a foregone conclusion that Debbie would actually be admitted to the bar – it could have gone either way. She was shown a seat at the back so she could slink out if she was not deemed a “fit and proper person” to practise law. Although the voluminous file on the table contained plenty of evidence to the contrary.

“I was quite concerned,” says Keith Hamburger, former Director-General, Queensland Corrective Services Commission. “There must have been somewhere around 20 former prisoners sitting in front of me. It was a very formal place. I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, what are these women going to do if she gets knocked back?’ I was dreading what would happen.”