'Canberrans suing their own government' costing ACT tens of millions

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.

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.

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.

Independent MLA Thomas Emerson said it was concerning that medical negligence payouts had more than doubled over a two-year period.

"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.

"But seeing a more than doubling of medical negligence, damages and settlements over just a two-year period is seriously concerning — both from a medical perspective, and also from a budgetary perspective.

"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?"

Footpath-related injury payouts

ACTIA also paid out nearly $2.8 million on footpath-related personal injury claims last financial year.

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.

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. 

"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.

"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."

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.

'Cost of incompetence'

Mr Emerson said the cost of Canberrans suing the government was having a big budgetary impact.

"These figures show the whole-of-government cost of incompetence is massive. They're pretty shocking figures," he said.

"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."

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".

"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.

"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."

'Really crude numbers'

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.

"These are really crude numbers, so they don't provide any explanation of what is actually happening," she said.

"I think the government is getting better at settling these type of matters in a timely way and managing historical matters as well.

"And also there have been a couple of large settlements too."

She said the government had learned from the cases and was always looking to make improvements.

"Particularly in the medical negligence space, in terms of many of these issues have been inquiries and there have been recommendations," she said. 

"Obviously when … 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."