Page 2321 - Week 07 - Wednesday, 2 August 2017
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concerned since 2007 or 2008 and had made numerous complaints in relation to the tenant’s dogs. Their complaints had been directed to Housing ACT and to Domestic Animal Services. Housing ACT had always told the neighbour to call DAS. The bottom line is that two of the Chief Minister’s agencies were well aware of concerns of citizens about a particular house, and the dangerous dogs issue therein, where this attack happened three years later.
Mr Barr ended his rejection letter with: “I am sympathetic to the serious injuries that the boy sustained, but they are not the commissioner’s or the territory’s responsibility.” The dismissive and tart brevity of the Chief Minister’s letter in this situation is simply staggering. Further, it is clear that Mr Barr and those advising him consider that the absence of legal liability and effective remedy, as found by the court, justify his refusal to assist the boy and his family by an ex gratia payment of an amount that is very modest in the circumstances.
Mr Barr’s letter asserts that he could not see any special circumstances to warrant his authorising any payment to the boy. Mr Barr in his letter misconceives the whole point about ex gratia payments. Section 130 of the Financial Management Act 1996 makes it expressly clear that such payments may indeed be made, although payment would not otherwise be authorised by law or required to meet a legal liability. Incidentally, it is a mark of the political and administrative low point that we have reached in this territory that the situation of a then six-year-old boy, who is now 13, so injured, falls to be determined under a management statute.
As I understand, ex gratia payments are a familiar feature in all the Australian state and territory jurisdictions. Ultimately they spring from the traditional powers of the Crown to use its funds to help or assist persons prejudiced, afflicted or injured in various ways by gaps in the law or the like. It is immediately clear, then, that such payments are not limited in their nature to the dire results of shortcomings in the law or legislation, or to particular categories of injury and affliction. It is not required that it be shown, in order for such a payment to be warranted, that the government concerned or one of its agencies was liable at law.
Mr Barr’s letter rejecting the ex gratia request in that respect totally misunderstands the position. At the same time it is indicative of his lack of humane judgment that he would write or sign such a letter against such a horrendous background. It is very clear indeed that Commonwealth prime ministers and treasurers and state premiers and their treasurers around Australia have from time to time made responsible and statesmanlike decisions to give such payments. No legal liability was required to support and to justify such decisions as being appropriate.
If Mr Barr does not regard the circumstances of this injured boy—savagely mauled by two dogs, through no fault of his own, upon premises of ACT public housing, where an effective legal remedy is denied—as not being special circumstances, then one wonders what circumstances Mr Barr would ever regard as being special.
This whole situation shows the Chief Minister in a very poor light indeed as the leader of our statutory body politic here in the ACT. It also shows the increasing tendency in
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