Editorial: Three kids were murdered. How did this happen?

Here’s what we know.

Jamelia,10, Arnda, 7, and Kelvin Hawke, four months, were murdered by their mother in Port Hedland in 2022.

There had been numerous warnings from police, the Department of Housing and the children’s grandmother Dorothy Papertalk that the children were at risk.

Margaret Hawke stabbed and strangled her three children, then set fire to their home.

She was sentenced to life imprisonment.

As has been pointed out by eminent barrister and former governor of WA, Malcolm McCusker, and former president of the Children’s Court of WA, Denis Reynolds, the criminal trial did not deal with the institutional failures that preceded the tragedy.

The pair has called for a public inquest to expose the system breakdown which failed to save the children.

The State Government of WA has dug in its heels and refused to order such an inquiry.

Attorney-General Tony Buti insists he cannot override the Coroner’s previous decision not to hold an inquest unless there is fresh evidence.

Mr McCusker and Mr Reynolds argue that under the Coroners Act a coroner must hold an inquest if directed by the Attorney-General.

And so the debate goes on and on without satisfactory outcome.

It is clear numerous opportunities to take action which might have saved those three innocent lives were missed.

Questions about the WA Department of Child Protection’s handling of this matter have continued to mount as the scandal has grown, driven by reporting in The Australian by Ros Thomas.

Yet we remain a long way off getting the full picture about this tragedy, as well as the wider issue of Indigenous child protection.

Perhaps to do that we need to seriously listen to the views of Northern Territory Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price.

Senator Nampijinpa Price said at the weekend that the child protection system should become a commonwealth responsibility that prioritises the safety of Indigenous children over cultural and kinship care.

“This suggestion that a child’s got to be attached to their culture and their country — well, I’m sorry, but right now, for these children, their culture is utterly dysfunctional,” she said.

The problem was known.

“We need action. The grandmothers on the ground are who those idiots should be listening to,” she said.

There is a truth to her lament which must not be ignored.

This is too serious a problem to look away due to fear of repeating the Stolen Generation.

And the WA Government owes it to the memory of the three murdered Hawke children and to their grieving grandmother to stop dancing around legal arguments and technicalities.

This should be straightforward. How is it that the department did not protect these children?

How many other children are at risk? How do we protect them? How do we ensure this does not happen again?

And then there is this from Senator Nampijinpa Price: “Stolen Generation culture is what is leading to the deaths of innocent children … if it means protecting a child from being murdered, from being sexually abused, from being neglected, then call me a damn racist.”

The senator has been courageous enough to get to the heart of the matter.