Our Team
Family Leadership • Lived Experience • Purposeful Action
IPP Committee in Action is led by people with direct, enduring experience of the IPP sentence and its consequences. Our leadership combines family advocacy, lived expertise, parliamentary engagement, media work and practical support for people serving IPP sentences. The team’s authority comes not only from campaigning, but from years of sustained contact with IPP prisoners and their families. That insight informs our evidence, strengthens our public advocacy and ensures that every aspect of our work remains grounded in the people most affected.
Shirley Debono
Founder, IPP Committee in Action
Shirley de Bono is the founder of IPP Committee in Action and a relentless, proactive family advocate for the complete retrospective abolition of the IPP sentence. Her commitment is grounded in direct experience: her son has remained subject to an IPP sentence imposed in 2005.
Shirley does not campaign at a distance. She maintains regular direct contact with people serving IPP sentences and their families, listening to their experiences, identifying urgent concerns and ensuring that those facing isolation, uncertainty and institutional delay know they have not been forgotten. Her sustained personal engagement keeps the movement rooted in the realities experienced inside prisons and by families in the community.
Through determined campaigning, Shirley has brought those experiences before Parliament, the media and international human rights forums, including the United Nations. She works proactively with journalists, parliamentarians and other influential figures to secure attention, challenge inaction and ensure that the human consequences of IPP are communicated accurately and with dignity.
Shirley also acts as a McKenzie Friend to a number of people serving IPP sentences, providing lay support as they navigate complex legal and administrative processes. Her work combines direct human connection, family-led advocacy, case support, political engagement and an unwavering demand for public accountability.
Marie Cavanagh
Marie leads sustained parliamentary engagement on behalf of the campaign. She coordinates meetings and communications with ministers, Members of Parliament and other political decision-makers, ensuring that the continuing consequences of IPP remain firmly before those with the authority to act.
Her work goes beyond raising awareness. Marie persistently presses elected representatives for clear commitments, meaningful scrutiny and urgent legislative action. Through determined relationship-building and political advocacy, she helps translate the experiences of IPP prisoners and their families into focused demands for justice, accountability and the complete retrospective abolition of the sentence.
Marie brings persistence, credibility and the perspective of a family that has lived with the uncertainty and harm of IPP for more than two decades.
Adam J. Robinson MA, BA (Hons)
Research and Strategy Lead
Adam is a criminology researcher, criminal justice commentator and social entrepreneur with direct lived experience of the IPP sentence. He holds an MA in Crime and Justice, awarded with Distinction, and a BA (Hons) in Criminology and Psychology.
He leads strategic research, institutional analysis and evidence development for IPP Committee in Action and the People’s Inquiry. Adam is also leading the establishment of the proposed National Lived Experience and Victims’ Justice Council and the development of the Inquiry’s Victims and Survivors Panel.
Adam is also the founder of Exemplar Group Ltd, a mission-led company bringing together justice research, strategic advisory work and public communication through Exemplar Justice and Exemplar Voices. Alongside this work, he is developing Exemplar Transformation as a separate Community Interest Company focused on trauma-informed recovery, reintegration and long-term wellbeing.
Adam rejects the false choice between supporting victims and confronting injustice. He is committed to ensuring that victims and survivors are heard with dignity, independence and genuine influence, integrating their perspectives into the Inquiry and future criminal justice reform to strengthen accountability, public safety and the prevention of further harm.