KIDS MUST BE PROTECTED

OUR front page report yesterday was a shocking indictment on a woman who deserves to be labelled a monster.

Her callous actions in delivering a fatal blow to her little son and in her disregard for the agony he suffered as he died have disgusted the nation.

It was also an indictment on the penalties handed down in manslaughter cases involving the deaths of children in this state.

Heidi Strbak was jailed for nine years for the death of her son, Tyrell Cobb. She can apply for parole after just four years – a pitifully short term, but the equivalent of the entire lifetime of that poor child.

As we revealed yesterday, of the 33 people charged over such incidents in the past 12 years, not one of then has received more than a 10-year term.

It is encouraging therefore that following what the public certainly sees as an inadequate sentence in the Tyrell Cobb case, the State Government has shown some regard for community expectations by ordering a review.

And yet the madness of what the wider community perceives as a disregard for the rights of children continues.

It is particularly gut-wrenching for us to report today of another case in which decent Queenslanders would have expected people in authority to have moved heaven and earth to protect innocent children, and to ensure the rights of the little kids involved would have trumped every other consideration.

Child Safety officials are reportedly working to “reunite’’ children with a violent, pot-smoking mother whose savage attack on her four-year-old daughter left the child with brain injuries so severe that officers feared she might not walk or talk again.

In the wake of the deserved soulsearching over the Stolen Generation, bureaucratic thinking is such now that there is a marked reticence to separate indigenous children from their parents even in cases involving extreme violence and neglect.

That in itself is racist, because policies that would rightly remove such at-risk children from bad parents in every other sector of Australian society are being altered on the basis of colour.

But this is just one element in a much broader pattern. The community has a growing perception that the safety of honest, decent citizens has to take a back seat to the welfare of perpetrators.

Bureaucrats and the courts will dispute such claims, but the lopsided tally is on the record. As an example, we point to the matter of domestic violence and how it has been handled in this state. Action was only taken to rein in the appalling incidence of abuse of women and children after media and public outcry reached levels the Government could not ignore.

The same must happen with the disgraceful level of violence and neglect shown to children in the tragic cases across society that have come to light again with the Tyrell Cobb matter. Put bluntly, there can only be one consideration – the rights of society’s most vulnerable and precious members, its children.

Governments, their departments and the courts have to wake up to that.