Former principal admits to fraudulently claiming $3.4m in federal and state funding for Indigenous Queensland school

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

A former Senior Australian of the Year has pleaded guilty to fraudulently claiming millions of taxpayers’ dollars for a top Indigenous school.



Jean Illingworth, the former principal of Djarragun College, near Cairns, appeared in the Cairns district court on Monday where she pleaded guilty to fraud and obtaining property by deception.

The 67-year-old admitted to inflating student numbers to obtain $3.4m in extra state and commonwealth funding for the school in 2010-11.

Illingworth entered the guilty plea moments before her five-week trial was due to begin.

She was released on bail and will be sentenced in the same court on Friday morning.

Prosecutors dropped all other charges against her, including claims she attempted to pervert the course of justice and breached bail conditions by contacting crown witnesses, after she admitted to the two more serious charges.

Illingworth spent nearly a year in jail for pre-sentence custody before she was released earlier this year. It is unlikely she will spend more time behind bars.

She made no comment when she left court flanked by supporters.

Her barrister, Ken Fleming, said she was relieved, although he would not comment on her eleventh-hour plea.

“It has taken an enormous toll on her but that’s as far as I can go,” he said. “She’s spent a year in prison.”

During a bail application last year, Illingworth’s former lawyer, Tony Kimmins, told a Cairns court she lived with anxiety and was not coping well behind bars.

Illingworth, who worked at the college for about a decade, was named the Queensland Senior Australian of the Year in 2009 for her work in transforming the once dysfunctional college into a much admired model of success.

The school has since been taken over by Noel Pearson’s Cape York Partnerships organisation.

Illingworth was stood down as principal after police investigations began in 2011, and she was formally charged last year.