Dingo conspiracy claim dubious, House told

Press, 1 March 1984, Page 10

Dingo conspiracy claim dubious, House told

NZPA-AAP Darwin There had been no substance in allegations by two private investigators that Azaria Chamberlain was taken and killed by a dingo at Ayers Rock, the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly was told yesterday. There had been no substance to allegations that local people had conspired to hide the truth, the territory’s Attorney-General, Mr Jim Robertson, told Parliament. The allegations had been based on, “at best, dubious reasoning, and at worst, fabrication,” he said. A Sydney publisher, Phil Ward, and a private investigator, Don McNicol, both Seventh-day Adventists, put the allegations before the Territory Government in May last year after an investigation into the

disappearance of Azaria from Ayers Rock on August 17, 1980. They said that they had spent about ?Austl(TO,ooo (about $140,000) on the investigation, which they began immediately after Azaria’s mother, Lynne, was found guilty by a Northern Territory Supreme Court jury in October, 1982, of murdering the child. She is serving a mandatory life sentence in Berrimah jail, Darwin. Mr Robertson tabled in Parliament a legal opinion to the Government from the territory’s Solicitor-General, Mr Brian Martin, on the Ward and McNicol allegations and a subsequent police investigation of their allegations. Mr Robertson challenged Messrs Ward and McNicol to launch private prosecutions on the matter.