Premier doubles down as Folbigg slams ‘unfair’ $2m deal
Alex Mitchell |
A strident state premier is not budging on a widely condemned $2 million compensation offer to a woman who was wrongfully imprisoned for two decades.
Kathleen Folbigg has described NSW Premier Chris Minns’ repeated calls for her to sue the state if she wants more money as “a slap in the face” after she was offered the ex gratia payment.
She was jailed in 2003 over the deaths of her four children, but her convictions were quashed and she was freed in 2023 after new scientific evidence cast reasonable doubt over her guilt.
Unmoved, the premier stood by the offer to Ms Folbigg while agreeing she was innocent.
The amount offered represents about 0.0015 per cent of the annual NSW budget of $128 billion.
“There was pro-bono legal work that law firms undertook on behalf of Kathleen Folbigg … she might have a personal obligation to them she feels she has (but) the NSW taxpayers don’t,” Mr Minns said.
“It’s not my money, it’s taxpayer money, we don’t have $20 million, $30 million, $15 million just lying around, it necessarily has to come from other programs.”
David Eastman successfully sued for $7 million under ACT human rights law after serving 19 years for a murder over which he was wrongfully convicted.
But most Australians wrongly accused of murder have relied on governments’ good grace to compensate them for lost years.
Lindy Chamberlain, jailed for four years before authorities agreed a dingo had likely taken her baby from an Uluru campsite, was awarded $1.7 million including legal costs in 1992.
That sum would be worth $4 million today, allowing for inflation.
Ms Folbigg, who told News Corp the money she had been offered was “not a fair figure”, said the prospect of more legal action was “traumatising”.
“For them to turn around and offer what they did … for them to turn around and say you can sue the government like everybody else was quite a slap in the face,” she said.
“Plan A was hopefully to be offered enough that it could be invested and I could live reasonably comfortably, without having a fear that I won’t have superannuation that’s enough to support me or I won’t be able to go to the dentist without having to sacrifice something else.”
Others across the political spectrum, including Greens MP Sue Higginson, have queried how the $2 million figure was arrived at.
“I know there’s room in the budget right now to give Kathleen something more than $2 million, something more commensurate with the harm that the justice system has perpetrated,” she said.
Ms Folbigg’s solicitor Rhanee Rego has labelled the sum offered as “a moral affront – woefully inadequate and ethically indefensible”.
AAP
