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MICHAEL Chamberlain has welcomed a new coronial inquest into the death of his daughter Azaria at Uluru in 1980.
Dr Chamberlain’s legal team asked the Northern Territory Coroner to again look into whether dingoes could kill children.
They presented the case of a boy, 9, who was mauled to death on Fraser Island in 2001 as evidence to reopen an inquiry.
This will be the fourth coronial inquest into what happened the night Azaria disappeared in August 1980 – the third inquest had an open finding.
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Dr Chamberlain said he hoped he would finally get answers from the latest inquiry, which begins on February 24.
“I’m really just pleasantly surprised about this,” he told ABC Radio.
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“It’s been 31 years now and I just hope, well I’m sure this time it will be the ultimate verdict which we’ve been looking for.”
The case made headlines around the world after Lindy Chamberlain claimed a dingo had taken her nine-week-old baby.
Ms Chamberlain, who later remarried and is now Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, was convicted of Azaria’s murder in 1982 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Dr Chamberlain was convicted as an accessory and given a suspended sentence.
Both those convictions were later quashed by a 1987 royal commission that exonerated both parents.
Northern Territory barrister John Lawrence, SC, said the new inquest would have evidence to consider not known at the time Azaria disappeared in 1980.
“What we have now is several instances, tragically, of dingoes attacking people and in one instance killing a child,” he said.
“The defence (in the murder trial) called various experts to say that damage to the same clothing could have been caused by canine teeth.
“There was no evidence then of dingoes having attacked other people. Now there is.” Northern Territory Coroner Elizabeth Morris will lead the inquest.
Ms Chamberlain-Creighton is living in Western Australia. The couple stayed together during Ms Chamberlain-Creighton’s imprisonment, but separated in 1990.