LOST IN STATE OF DENIAL

QUEENSLAND is witnessing a child safety crisis involving kids known to be at risk.

If the State Government wants to think otherwise, it is in severe denial.

In light of the tragic death of a ninemonth-old baby this week and other cases involving death or serious injury, the Government cannot continue to keep harping on about cuts to budgets and services under the Newman government. Labor was returned to power in 2015 and since then, even though it is now well into its second term, funding and staff cuts in Child Safety remain an issue.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk must rethink comments she made at estimates hearings at State Parliament in July, when she refused to concede the Government was “presiding over a child safety system in crisis”. At the time she also dumped responsibility on the head of the senior bureaucrat, saying Queensland Family and Child Commissioner, Cheryl Vardon, had said the system was not in crisis.

Passing the buck has become a hallmark in politics. Does Ms Palaszczuk continue to hide behind her bureaucracy?

Does the Premier or the Child Safety Minister, Di Farmer, intend calling an independent inquiry into how that baby girl died this week when the department had already been alerted? Why was the child still with her parents who were homeless and drifting between the Gold Coast and northern NSW, living rough in the dunes?

Child Safety was told that this family was existing in makeshift shelters. Upset residents had reported hearing the baby’s cries in the cold of winter.

With this in mind and other cases – including that of a baby girl who suffered head injuries and had to be placed on life support, and another child put back into the care of a mother accused of harming her – the time has long passed for excuses and finger pointing. Society is failing when it cannot protect its most vulnerable. Our city, agencies, police, courts and the Government can’t sit by and let this happen.

Instead of being driven by cultural and socio-economic sensitivities, or hamstrung by budget and staffing cuts and a case overload, child support agencies must be allowed to do their job with adequate resources. They have to operate by one major principle – the welfare of the child.

An ideology that puts reunification of families at any cost ahead of the wellbeing of the child has to be dumped. Children must come first, well ahead of social agenda, image and political survival.

To do otherwise is unforgivable.