Lawyer X compensation bill delayed amid fears it is a negotiating tactic

The Victorian government has tried to defer its own unprecedented bid to block compensation claims from the Lawyer X saga, and the fate of the now delayed legislation remains uncertain amid accusations the state was using it as a bargaining tactic to force lawyers to settle legal actions.

This week, Premier Jacinta Allan announced parliament would quickly move to pass laws that protected Victoria Police, the government and individual officers from multimillion-dollar civil compensation claims connected to Nicola Gobbo, the barrister turned police informer.

Former criminal barrister turned police informer Nicola Gobbo.Credit: The Age

But after rushing it through Victoria’s lower house on Wednesday, Labor made a surprise push to defer the bill in the upper house despite the premier and attorney-general declaring it was “time to end this dark chapter”.

The government lost that vote on Wednesday night, forcing the issue onto Thursday’s agenda. But the bill was delayed, having to wait to go to a vote because of a lengthy debate over the government’s 1000-page youth justice bill, which threatened to go late into Thursday and spill over into an extra session on Friday.

The strategy prompted accusations the bill was never intended to pass this week. Libertarian MP David Limbrick said the government would have always known it wouldn’t have the numbers to pass the Lawyer X bill and suggested another factor was at play.

“I’m very concerned that what’s going to happen if this bill is adjourned and doesn’t either pass or fail today, is that all of the lawyers involved in these cases at the moment will be incentivised to immediately settle rather than go to trial,” Limbrick said.

“Potentially, that is actually the objective of what’s happening here.”

Gobbo is suing Victoria Police for up to $30 million in compensation and is due in court next month.

Allan denied that the bill was designed to stall in parliament.

“Every bill that government puts to parliament we put because we want that bill to pass,” she said.

“This bill is reflective of a very dark chapter in the history of this state, around how Victoria Police engaged police informants. And this happened 20 years ago. It is time that this chapter was brought to a close.”

Victorian Greens integrity spokesman Tim Read said on Thursday morning his party was not in a position to support the bill. He criticised the government for rushing the bill while also dumping plans to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 14. The youth justice bill will still raise the age to 12.

“The premier has been very strong on consequences for children this week. But adult, senior, middle-aged police officers responsible for this debacle should also be facing consequences,” he said.

Without support from the Coalition and the Greens, the government has a difficult pathway to pass the legislation and will need votes from Legalise Cannabis and Animal Justice alongside more conservative crossbenchers.

Opposition Leader John Pesutto said the decision to bring the bill forward urgently only to seek to defer it was a sign of a “dysfunctional government”.

“We’ve seen it in relation to the housing summit, the CFMEU response, we’ve seen it on a range of things: Increasing chaos and dysfunction about the way the government is operating,” Pesutto said.

Another compensation case headed to court next year relates to Faruk Orman, who served 12 years in prison before his conviction was quashed because of Gobbo’s role as both police informant and his lawyer.

Former Supreme Court judge Jack Rush, KC, who is acting as counsel for Orman, said the bill would “extinguish the common law rights of persons to pursue claims for injury and loss due to unlawful, unjustified police conduct”.

“Not only does this extraordinary legislation act retrospectively to extinguish Orman’s claim,
it means the police involved are unaccountable in any way for their conduct,” he said.

“The precedent set by this disturbing and profound legislation is, on my research,
unprecedented in Australia.

“This is not a matter about what one thinks about Farouk Orman, it is rather about a basic principle, every citizen’s right to pursue the wrong and the harm caused by malicious acts.”

Peter Yates, a former Macquarie Bank executive and CEO of Kerry Packer’s PBL, has been scathing of the Victorian government’s proposal. Yates was a key figure in the campaign to free Kathleen Folbigg 20 years after she was wrongfully convicted of murdering three of her children, and manslaughter of the fourth.

“I believe in a liberal democratic society, and I believe that we all have the right of law and due process, and the suggestion that the state would interfere with that right is absolutely appalling,” Yates said at a Wednesday night forum called Science, Media and the Law.

He said if ordinary people needed to pay compensation for doing the wrong thing, then the government should be held to the same standard.

Folbigg’s lawyers have previously said they are expecting to receive record compensation for the years she spent in prison.

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