Hoddle Street murderer not entitled to compensation for workplace treatment, court finds

The man responsible for the 1987 Hoddle Street massacre failed to secure compensation for his alleged treatment during the brief time he was employed by the Australian Regular Army.

The Federal Court dismissed an application by convicted murderer Julian Knight to review the Defence Force Ombudsman’s (DFO) refusal to provide him with counselling and an ex gratia payment for alleged workplace treatment between January and July 1987.

Knight was arrested in August 1987 for the murder of seven people and injuring 19 others during a shooting spree in Clifton Hill. He pleaded guilty to seven counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder and has since been incarcerated in a Victorian prison.

In the review proceedings, Knight claimed the DFO failed to “deal with” a 2024 complaint about how the Defence Abuse Response Taskforce (DART) handled a workplace issue he lodged in 2013.

In the 2013 complaint, Knight alleged that in the brief time he served as a junior staff cadet in the Australian Regular Army, he was the victim of various acts of “bastardisation” – also known as hazing – by senior staff cadets and suffered physical injuries as a result.

While the DART assessor found the complaint was “plausible and raised plausible mismanagement by defence”, Knight was ineligible for a reparation payment due to his incarceration.

In March 2023, Knight made a new complaint with additional material and facts to the DFO, which at that point had taken over the administration of the Defence Abuse Reparation Scheme.

The DFO said the complaint would not be investigated because the DART had already dealt with its substance.

Following judicial review proceedings before Justice Catherine Button in the Federal Court, Knight made the 2024 complaint, alleging the court found the DFO “does have the authority to consider a complaint relating to how the DART dealt with a complaint”.

In response, the DFO said Knight could access its counselling service but refused to recommend a reparation payment.

Knight told the Federal Court the DFO failed to perform its statutory function of “dealing with” the 2024 complaint and fell into error.

Justice Mark Moshinsky said that although the DFO declined to take any action in relation to the 2024 complaint, it did not mean it failed to perform the statutory function of “dealing with” Knight’s complaint.

“One can address or handle a matter without necessarily deciding to take action,” Justice Moshinsky said in his written reasons.

Knight also claimed the DFO made a factual error in assuming he could access the counselling services from prison, where he said internet access is prohibited and his phone use is restricted.

Addressing this, Justice Moshinsky said Knight’s evidence did not establish he could not access the services “by indirect means”.

“Further and in any event, even if the DFO made a factual error in this regard, it does not necessarily follow that he failed to perform his statutory function of ‘dealing with’ the 2024 complaint or otherwise fell into jurisdictional error,” the judge concluded.

In April 2014, a month before Knight was eligible for parole, new legislation was introduced to keep him behind bars unless he was dying and “no longer has the physical ability to do harm”.

Following numerous, baseless legal proceedings, the Victorian Supreme Court declared Knight a vexatious litigant in 2004.

The case: Knight v Defence Force Ombudsman [2025] FCA 1098.