Govt faces flood of unpaid claims
09.10.1997
THE State Government is facing claims for millions of dollars from Aborigines in remote parts of northern Queensland seeking unpaid ex-gratia criminal compensation payments.
Ex-gratia payments are made out of a State Government fund to victims when the convicted person cannot pay.
Brisbane solicitor Tony Bailey, who represented more than 100 Aboriginal criminal compensation applicants, confirmed only one award had been paid in the past year to one of his Gulf clients.
He said the unpaid claims included an award to a five-year-old girl who had been ``brutalised twice''.
Mr Bailey said four men were ordered to pay the girl more than $127,000 in September 1996 but nothing had been paid.
He said the girl was three at the time of the attacks but the men were unable to make the payments.
The money should then have been paid ex-gratia out of a government fund for the victims of crime.
The situation came to light after five criminal compensation claims went before Brisbane's District Court yesterday.
The claims all related to Aborigines from Gulf regions who were the victims of violent crimes.
District Court judge Fred McGuire, who originally sat on the cases in Mt Isa, awarded the applicants a total of $50,250.
The awards ranged from $15,500, for a woman who was bashed by her de facto husband, to $5500 for a man stabbed by his now dead de facto wife.
Barrister Tony Kimmins, the state's top criminal compensation lawyer, represented the applicants yesterday.
He told the court it was only in the past 12 months that Aborigines in the remote Gulf area filed for criminal compensation.
Mr Kimmins said Mr Bailey and psychiatrist Dr Ian Curtis went to the Gulf to help victims of crime in the region.
He said they visited areas such as Mornington, Normanton, Burketown, Doomagee and Mt Isa.
``These claims before the court are nowhere near the worst. I have been involved in 70 applications and there are others on top of that,'' he said.
A spokesman for Attorney General Denver Beanland said he was unaware of the exact amount owed to Gulf Aborigines in criminal compensation.
He said ex-gratia payments were considered case by case and often when they involved alcohol or drugs on both sides there was no priority and sometimes no payment.
The spokesman said, however, there would be payments made as time allowed.
