A senior Rebels bikie serving a 15-year jail term for drug offences has been given another chance at freedom, despite being sent back to jail for testing positive to methamphetamine while on parole.

Michael Tulloh was jailed in 2002 after he was caught with methamphetamine valued at millions of dollars at a Rivervale motel.

Tulloh was released on parole in December 2010 but he was jailed again in 2012 after a urine test revealed traces of the drug.

But the Prisoners Review Board has been ordered to reconsider its decision by Supreme Court Justice John Chaney, who ruled that automatically cancelling a prisoner's parole for testing positive to methamphetamine was unfair.

In a ruling that could have wide-ranging implications for the board, Justice Chaney found it had "inflexibly" revoked Tulloh's parole.

"There is nothing in the board's very brief reasons to suggest that it brought to bear any considerations going to the safety of the community other than the detection of methamphetamine in Mr Tulloh's urine," the judge said.

He found that a comment made to prisoners by former board chairwoman Narelle Johnson - when she said if a parolee were caught using "powders . . . you'll have to finish your time in prison" - was proof a policy existed.

Tulloh has claimed his positive test could have been caused by flu medication and he was not able to have his sample retested because it was kept for only three months by the laboratory used by the Department of Corrective Services.

And in a letter to the board, Tulloh argued he had successfully complied with orders for 21 months before the positive test.

Tulloh was jailed for 15 years after three trials, one aborted after another Rebels gang member photographed jurors.