I've been writing about children's rights for most of my professional life, and after two damning reports from the Victorian Ombudsman and the premier's announcement of a few score more child protection workers to remedy the problem, I have started to feel very tired.
Advertising for a few score more underpaid posts for one of the worst jobs to be filled by soon-to-be traumatised state government employees will not do anything substantive to prevent or remediate the suffering of the children who are being demoralised, struck, humiliated, ignored, left in pain, kidnapped, sexually assaulted or taught that they are unlovably naughty.
I read without surprise of yet another father who has been charged with killing his toddler because he is very angry with her mother. Of four little Australian girls who went missing, believed and in three cases found dead; only after their absence did neighbours speak up about the pummellings, bruises and misery they noticed in the weeks leading up to the disappearances.
'Child abuse' notifications continue to rise, while debate rages over whether or not more children are actually being abused, or whether mandatory reports are taking up too much of child protection workers' time, leaving little for intervention. Meanwhile asylum-seeking children are being detained with adults and not going to school for months.
A private members' bill seeking the appointment of a Children's Commissioner at federal level is (yet again) being circulated, this time through Facebook and other social networking sites. I do recall the then opposition spokesperson circulating a paper in support of this prior to the 2007 election, but it dropped off the to-do list when she became a real life minister.
In Victoria, Lisa Neville, the responsible minister is looking haggard. I have no doubt she cares, but it is Treasury and the Premier who decide what resources go into the reform of child protection systems and recommendations for reformed child protection laws and processes, to curb the disadvantages of the adversarial approach in the Children's Court and, dare I say it, the Family Court as well.
On Friday 19 November, an eminent emeritus professor of paediatrics and patron of a group committed to work towards the elimination of the right to hit children, Defence for Children International (Australian