Kathleen Folbigg has ruled out suing the NSW government over its $2 million ex gratia payment offer, but in a rare appearance has said she hopes the state will reconsider its offer.
The 58-year-old, who was wrongly convicted of murdering her four children and spent 20 years in jail, was released in 2023 and had her convictions quashed.
Once dubbed Australia’s worst female serial killer, Folbigg called the payment, which was spelt out in a letter from the Attorney-General Michael Daly, a “slap in the face”.
“‘We hope this rebuilds your life, full stop, see you later,’ that’s basically how it reads,” she told 9News.
“What [the government has] done is offer an innocent person an amount that doesn’t justify all the suffering and everything else that happened.”
Folbigg called the offer “low-ball” and “insulting”, but did not reveal what an appropriate compensation amount would look like.
Today, NSW Premier Chris Minns, who previously said Folbigg was free to sue his government if she thought the payout was inadequate, said the state budget could not afford a larger payment.
“We don’t have $30 million, $20 million, $15 million lying around,” he said.
With the government not budging, Folbigg said she feels she has no choice but to accept the offer, but hopes community outcry could prompt the government to review its proposal.
“I can’t go down the sue the government route,” she said.
“They want to give me that [$2 million], and then I’d have to spend all that money on fighting them, which is going to cost much more than that.”
There are calls for an inquiry into how the government came up with the figure, which Folbigg hopes will deliver something more substantial.
