{"id":84643,"date":"2026-09-01T04:22:28","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T04:22:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/84643\/"},"modified":"2026-09-01T04:22:28","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T04:22:28","slug":"canberrans-suing-act-government-costing-tens-of-millions-each-year-as-medical-negligence-costs-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/84643\/","title":{"rendered":"Canberrans suing ACT government costing tens of millions each year as medical negligence costs rise"},"content":{"rendered":"

Legal action taken against the ACT government continues to cost the territory tens of millions of dollars each year, with the price of medical negligence payouts on the rise.<\/p>\n

Newly released answers to questions taken on notice during budget estimates reveal the ACT Insurance Authority (ACTIA) paid out $60.7 million in damages, settlements and legal costs relating to medical negligence claims last financial year.<\/p>\n

In 2024-25, the territory paid more than $39 million for the same medical negligence-related costs, and in 2023-24 that figure was about $28.6 million.<\/p>\n

Independent MLA Thomas Emerson said it was concerning that medical negligence payouts had more than doubled over a two-year period.<\/p>\n

“Certainly, some lawsuits will not be avoidable, and we can understand as a community that our government will be exposed to some extent to liability claims,” he said.<\/p>\n

“But seeing a more than doubling of medical negligence, damages and settlements over just a two-year period is seriously concerning \u2014 both from a medical perspective, and also from a budgetary perspective.<\/p>\n

“How many health procedures could have been provided by investing sufficiently in the health system to avoid the medical negligence claims that have been put forward?”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Thomas Emerson says the ACT government should review the impact of increasing legal bills on the territory’s finances. (ABC News: Dave Sciasci)<\/p>\n

Footpath-related injury payouts<\/p>\n

ACTIA also paid out nearly $2.8 million on footpath-related personal injury claims last financial year.<\/p>\n

In 2024-25, the amount paid out for footpath-related injury claims was about $1.72 million, and in 2023-24 it was just more than $1 million.<\/p>\n

In 2025-26, the government spent nearly $7.2 million on footpath maintenance and repairs, meaning the cost of paying out personal injury claims was 38 per cent of what the government spent on footpath maintenance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Damaged<\/p>\n

Footpath-related personal injury claims cost the ACT government more than $2.7 million in the last financial year. (Supplied: Stuart Poole)<\/p>\n

“This is evidence that the government is not investing upstream and actually addressing the issues that are leading to harm in our community,” Mr Emerson said.<\/p>\n

“Because of that, we as taxpayers are having to pay more downstream in legal costs and payouts because of the government having not fulfilled its duties.”<\/p>\n

Mr Emerson also noted that $3.2 million was spent settling eight of the 85 institutional abuse claims opened in the past three financial years, suggesting there may be a bill of over $30 million for the outstanding cases.<\/p>\n

‘Cost of incompetence’<\/p>\n

Mr Emerson said the cost of “Canberrans suing their own government” was having a big budgetary impact.<\/p>\n

“These figures show the whole-of-government cost of incompetence is massive. They’re pretty shocking figures,” he said.<\/p>\n

“While not every lawsuit is avoidable, the ACT government should be closely investigating the impact of its growing legal bill on the territory’s finances.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The ACT government paid out more than $60 millions in damages, settlements, and legal costs for medical negligence claims in the last financial year. (ABC News: Lily Nothling)<\/p>\n

Mr Emerson said his criticism was not directed toward “Canberrans pursuing their own legal rights, but instead of the escalation in claims and damages that we’re seeing”.<\/p>\n

“The scale of legal costs and payouts revealed through these questions presents a huge opportunity for the ACT government to pursue budgetary savings and reduce community harm,” he said.<\/p>\n

“It’s such a cop-out for the government to complain about assembly committees criticising their fiscal performance while Canberrans are literally suing them for their failures.”<\/p>\n

‘Really crude numbers’<\/p>\n

But Health Minister Marisa Paterson said the figures did not provide the full picture, and that the government had been settling more cases in a timelier manner.<\/p>\n

“These are really crude numbers, so they don’t provide any explanation of what is actually happening,” she said.<\/p>\n

“I think the government is getting better at settling these type of matters in a timely way and managing historical matters as well.<\/p>\n

“And also there have been a couple of large settlements too.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Marisa Paterson says the government has been settling more cases.\u00a0 (ABC News: Ian Cutmore)<\/p>\n

She said the government had learned from the cases and was always looking to make improvements.<\/p>\n

“Particularly in the medical negligence space, in terms of many of these issues have been inquiries and there have been recommendations,” she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Obviously when \u2026 anything like this happens, the government does look into what has been the cause, and it’s about continuous improvement to ensure these things don’t happen again.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Legal action taken against the ACT government continues to cost the territory tens of millions of dollars each…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":84644,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[22093,22,21,82231,2184,37643,138571,37697,138572,30004,27345,90554],"class_list":["post-84643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-act-government","tag-au","tag-austrlia","tag-budget-estimates","tag-canberra","tag-damages","tag-footpath-related-injuries","tag-legal-costs","tag-medical-negligence","tag-settlement","tag-sue","tag-thomas-emerson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84643\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/84644"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/australia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}