Government has also agreed to issue apology as part of settlement to ‘provide some measure of closure’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The Queensland government has agreed to pay a $30m settlement and deliver a formal apology to the people of Palm Island, after the federal court found police officers breached the Racial Discrimination Act and acted unlawfully in responding to riots over a death in custody in 2004.

The settlement, which is subject to approval by the federal court, resolves a class action involving hundreds of claimants, lead by Lex, Cecilia and Agnes Wotton.

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“The parties have agreed on a $30m settlement for 447 claimants, including interest, applicants’ legal costs and administrative costs, and the delivery of an apology,” said the Queensland attorney general and minister for justice, Yvette D’Ath.

“Assuming the court approves the settlement, I know that all parties involved in this settlement hope it will provide some measure of closure and a way forward for the community of Palm Island.”

Queensland’s deputy premier and minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partnerships, Jackie Trad, said the government would seek to work with the Palm Island community on a “fitting way” to recognise the apology.

“I know that for many Palm Islanders this was an incredibly difficult time in their history. I look forward to continuing to work closely with the community as we move forward together,” she said.

The 2004 riots were sparked by the death in custody of Mulrunji Doomadgee, from extensive internal injuries, including a ruptured liver.

Lex Wotton was jailed for inciting the riots on Palm Island, during which the home of the arresting officer, Chris Hurley, and the police station were torched. The riots began after a coroner ruled Doomadgee’s death was an accident. It was later revealed a senior officer had given inaccurate information and failed to give relevant information to the coroner.

Wotton finished his post-sentence parole period, which restricted him from speaking publicly, in August 2014. He launched the legal action in 2015.

In 2016 he told Guardian Australia there were two sides to the story and the public had favoured one.

“We don’t say the police are all bad, but it was portrayed in that way in the sense of the Indigenous community uprising,” Wotton said.

“It made us out to be not law-abiding citizens and that the police were in the right to do what they did. It took this particular case to turn things around in some sense, I suppose.”

'You're my warrior': Lex Wotton and the fight for justice after the Palm Island riots Read more

Doomadgee had been arrested for public nuisance and locked in a police cell on Palm Island in November 2004.

Hurley initially claimed Doomadgee had tripped, but was charged with manslaughter over the death. He was acquitted in 2007.

The 2016 ruling by Justice Debbie Mortimer found the treatment of the Palm Island community by police was discriminatory and “an affront to the law”.



Mortimer’s ruling determined that officers operated with a sense of impunity and had committed unlawful discrimination in their response to Doomadgee’s death.

“The commanding and investigating officers of the QPS [Queensland police service] had no regard for any sense of (justifiable) outrage that might have been generated in some or all of the members of the Palm Island community from the way the investigation team interacted with, and treated, SS [Sr Sgt] Hurley,” she ruled.

The police command and its officers would not have had that attitude in a non-Indigenous but otherwise similar community, she said.

The unlawful actions included officers failing to treat Hurley as a suspect in Doomadgee’s death and allowing Hurley to continue to work as an officer on Palm Island in the days following the death.

It also included the failure of any officer to “communicate effectively with the Palm Island community and defuse tensions within that community” in relation to the death, and the use of emergency response officers to arrest Lex Wotton.

Wotton was awarded $220,000 in damages.