Dale Mills, Sydney
The NSW government is planning to restrict compensation claims to prisoners who sue for injuries received while in prison. This opens the door to prisons being able to risk the health and safety of inmates without effective redress.
On January 15, NSW justice minister John Natzistergos said he would introduce legislation to the NSW parliament this year to cap compensation payouts. The proposed changes also mean that anything less than a 15% total body impairment will be ignored, even where the injuries are permanent.
The case being used to dramatise allegedly exorbitant payouts is that of Goulburn prisoner Craig Ballard. Most Sydney newspapers have sensationalised Ballard's recent payout of $100,000, describing it as being for "falling out of bed". This makes light of what was in fact a serious accident. Ballard received permanent head injuries, which have left him with impaired speech, loss of memory and continuing dependence on medical treatment.
Nevertheless, in September, Labor Premier Bob Carr criticised the decision in a media conference, arguing that it was a "hangover from pre-reform days". He said: "If you've assaulted or murdered a law-abiding citizen, I think you forgo the right to invoke public liability to get a big cash payout and that's the law that we've now got in place." Most people in Australian prisons have not committed murder or assault.
It becomes clear that Ballard is simply being used an excuse, when you look at the national tabloid media, all owned by the Murdoch family, which is running similar campaigns in other states.
On September 2, the Melbourne Herald Sun reported "outrage" that a prisoner, Ayhan Gur, successfully sued a Melbourne remand centre for $40,000 for injuries he received.
In response, the Victorian opposition corrections spokesperson Richard Della Riva echoed Carr's views, despite their party differences. He said that prisoners should not receive the same rights as "law abiding citizens".
The Herald Sun on December 29 picked up the campaign again, asserting that "ordinary Victorians" believed that prisoners didn't deserve compensation for injuries caused by negligent prison authorities.
The January 11 Queensland Sunday Mail reported that during the last two years, 37 prisoners have received compensation payments. The article's slant was familiar: suggesting that the prisoners did not deserve compensation. Their injuries included those received from prison bashings, prison workshops and farm machinery. Some were permanently injured.
Commenting on the proposed reforms, Brett Collins from the Sydney-based prisoners' rights group Justice Action said the government owed a duty of care to every citizen. "This responsibility should be most expressed to those confined and totally controlled by state-run institutions. If prisoners are excluded they will leave jail resentfully, believing that they owe no obligation to the community and are more likely to re-offend. They don't adopt slave status to be raped or beaten because they breached a law. They are people with families who love and rely on them to maintain them upon release."
From Green Left Weekly, January 21, 2004.
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