Money spent on injury payouts could be better spent on maintenance, says Thomas Emerson. Photo: Living Streets Canberra Facebook.
The ACT Government paid out about $6 million for footpath-related personal injury claims between 2020 and 2025.
Over the same period, the government spent $1.7 million on legal costs related to footpath injury claims.
The figures have been provided in answers to questions on notice from independent MLA Thomas Emerson to Attorney-General Tara Cheyne.
Mr Emerson said it was alarming that the government was having to pay out such significant sums of money because of footpath-related injuries.
He said poor quality footpaths were bad for the city, bad for the budget and bad for the community.
“We could save a lot of money and pain by fixing damaged footpaths before Canberrans are injured by them,” he said.
“How many footpaths could have been repaired or upgraded with the millions of dollars we’re spending on footpath-related injury payouts and legal costs?”
Mr Emerson said there was also a significant human cost attached to damaged footpaths.
“A footpath in need of repair can leave people, particularly those with mobility restrictions, feeling stranded and isolated in their own neighbourhood,” he said.
Last month Mr Emerson moved a motion in the Legislative Assembly about gaps in the ACT’s footpath and bike path networks.
The Assembly passed the motion, amended by the Liberals and Greens, which called on the government to publish and regularly update a register of all path network projects and investigate a pavement condition target for all community paths in the ACT.
But Mr Emerson was not so successful with another footpath-related motion, with Labor and the Liberals combining to rebuff his bid to overturn the deferral of a new fee system for builders blocking footpaths and roads around construction sites, instituted after lobbying from the Property Council.
Ms Cheyne told Mr Emerson in her answers that the payout of $5.9 million came from 76 claims, from a total of 716 Personal Injury Claim Notifications over the last four financial years.
She said the ACT Government Solicitor only had data on notifications for those years.
The payout figure for 2024-25 was $1,722,578 from 25 personal injury claims, the largest sum and number of claims over the five-year period.
In 2020-21, the government paid out $1,113,539 from 13 claims, increasing to $1,139,839 in 2021-22 from just eight claims.
There was a dip in 2022-23 with $882,752 paid out, but the number of claims doubled to 16.
The payout figure jumped again in 2023-24 to $1,065,164, this time from 14 claims.
Apart from the 2022-23 dip, legal costs have been rising, surging to $642,079.93 in 2024-25.
In 2020-21, they were $180,024.80, in 2021-22 $334,838.86, then down to $242,150.47 in 2022-23 and up again to $346,640.58 in 2023-24.
Ms Cheyne noted that personal injury claims may take several years to resolve, and therefore, legal expenditure in relation to a particular claim may be incurred over a number of years.
She said the legal expenses in 2024-25 were about 1.2 per cent of the total government expenditure for legal services.
The ACT Government Solicitor’s professional fees associated with personal injury claims were cost-recovered from the ACT Insurance Authority under the Territory’s insurance arrangements.
The government spent $6,606,662 on community path network repairs and maintenance last financial year.
In 2020-21, the figure was $6,746,268, then $8,222,177 in 2021-22, $6,869,567 in 2022-23 and $7,579,058 in 2023-24.
