Our leaders have failed us
A little girl has suffered and no one seems to care
HOW is it possible that despite the release of a shocking report into the endless failures to protect a two-year-old girl from an alleged rape in the NT no one has lost their job for their part in this national shame?
A government report this week shows the true horror of the house where this little girl lived. Police had more than 150 ‘interactions’ with the girl’s family since 2002; 52 child protection notifications were made following allegations of domestic violence, emotional harm, failure to send the children to school and, perhaps most shockingly, previous claims of sexual abuse of children at the home.
Put simply, this was a house of horrors that any child should have been saved from.
But Territory Families said the rape of the child was ‘not foreseeable’ because the assault was allegedly committed by ‘a perpetrator that walked into this family’.
There is no right-minded person in Australia who thinks a home with this many problems is the right place for any child to grow up in.
Clearly children should have been removed from danger way before anyone else entered this house.
Despite these sickening admissions, no one has lost their job; not the people on the ground, their managers or the relevant minister.
But how can we expect anything to change when, despite these detailed failures of the system in the NT, not a single word was even uttered about this crisis in Canberra.
Question time was saved for a slagging match about Labor MPs who couldn’t get their citizenship papers in order and the Prime Minister was too busy saving his own job with a Budget to demand anyone lose theirs over this disgrace.
Surely we live in a country that is better than this? Sadly it seems not.
We have lost more than just our moral compass when the extent of the failures around this family come to light and largely no one cares.
THERE’S A RORT BEING COOKED UP IN VICTORIA
There is a very dirty deal between the major political parties being cooked up in Victoria. The deal would see parties get $6 of taxpayers’ money for every vote they get at the upcoming State Election.
Under the scheme, the parties will carve up an astonishing $45 million in public money under the guise of ‘cleaning up’ political donations.
To give you an idea about how disgraceful that cash grab is, just over $62 million was handed to political parties for the votes they got at the last Federal Election.
Now Victoria’s political parties want the public to give them more than two thirds of the entire money given at a national election for a single state election.
This new rort will effectively see the drawbridge raised between the political process and the business community.
If the people in government don’t need any contact with business to help to fund elections, they will have no interest in keeping any focus on passing laws that help enterprise and find ways to remove regulation that hinders the very people who employ millions of Australians.
But more importantly, it will serve as the ultimate example of the political class’s attitude to the public.
Our role is to shut up, pay our tax so they can spend it on things to be re-elected.
They will make us vote or pay a fine, and all the while they will use our money to pay for them to lie in election ads and play their internal party games.
This is one of the worst rorts ever cooked up by the insider’s club and must be defeated. Don’t miss the special edition of Paul Murray LIVE: The Treasurer and his Budget this Monday at 9pm as Scott Morrison answers questions from more than 120 voters LIVE from the North Lakes Sports Club, Queensland. From tax cuts, the deficit, superannuation to the pension, nothing will be off limits as the audience hands down its verdict on Budget 2018.