Kathleen Folbigg has been compensated an “insulting” amount of $2m after spending two decades behind bars before an inquiry found she had been wrongfully convicted for killing her four children.
Folbigg, once referred to as among Australia’s worst serial killers, was convicted in 2003 and ordered to serve a minimum 25-year sentence for the suffocation murders of three of her children and manslaughter of a fourth.
Her name was cleared and convictions quashed in 2023 by the appeals court just months after she was granted an unconditional pardon and released from prison. Her release came after an independent inquiry heard new scientific evidence that indicated her children may have died from natural causes or a genetic mutation.
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Greens MP Sue Higginson, who was heavily involved in pressuring the government to release Folbigg after the independent inquiry, revealed the New South Wales government had compensated her just $2m.
“$2m barely covers what Kathleen could have earned on a full-time salary over 20 years,” Higginson said in a statement on Thursday.
“Kathleen has not only lost 20 years of wages, she has lost her four children, her home and her employability. She has racked up legal costs fighting her wrongful conviction, she has lost her superannuation, and she has been the victim of one of the worst injustices in this state’s history – wrongful imprisonment.”
Legal experts had told Guardian Australia in 2023 that Folbigg should receive the biggest compensation payout in Australian history because no other wrongful conviction had caused as much harm.
Lindy Chamberlain, who was wrongly imprisoned for three years for the murder of baby Azaria, was compensated $1.3m in 1992, $700,000 less than Folbigg more than two decades later.
In July, Folbigg had released a statement saying she wanted the compensation matter resolved quickly so she could “begin to rebuild and move forward”.
The premier, Chris Minns, was asked following this if he would meet with Folbigg. But he said he would not, telling reporters: “There’s a lot of difficult calls for me to make as premier. This isn’t one of them.”
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On Thursday, the attorney general, Michael Daley announced that Folbigg had been compensated.
“The Attorney General has decided to make an ex-gratia payment to Kathleen Folbigg following her application,” he said.
“The decision follows thorough and extensive consideration of the materials and issues raised in Ms Folbigg’s application and provided by her legal representatives.”
He had said that, at Folbigg’s request, the government had agreed to not publicly discuss the details of the decision.
