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Kathleen Folbigg has called NSW Premier Chris Minns’ suggestions that she can sue the state if she wants a bigger compensation payment a “slap in the face”.
Minns is not budging on a widely condemned $2 million ex gratia payment offer to Folbigg, who was wrongfully imprisoned for two decades.
Folbigg 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.
Folbigg’s solicitor Rhanee Rego labelled the sum offered as “a moral affront” that was “woefully inadequate and ethically indefensible” last week.
Minns defended the amount last week, saying on Friday that Folbigg’s lawyers were welcome to sue the state government if they felt the grace payment was inadequate, but he wouldn’t budge without a court order.
“There are no future legal steps that Ms. Folbigg and her legal team cannot take,” stated Minns.
NSW Premier Chris Minns stood by the compensation sum, emphasizing, “it isn’t taxpayer money at stake.” Source: AAP / Steven Saphore
“This was the most amount that we could justify, given it would come from other resources.”
The premier has stood by the offer to Folbigg while agreeing she was innocent.
“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,” Minns said on Monday.
“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.”
The amount offered represents about 0.0015 per cent of the annual NSW budget of $128 billion.
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.
Nevertheless, many Australians who were falsely charged with murder have depended on the government’s willingness to provide compensation for the time they lost.
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.
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.
