Floating in a pond in Sydney was a suitcase which attracted the attention of several young boys. It had been there for a few days, when the curious boys decided to fish it out of the water.

The decomposing body of a little boy was packed inside the suitcase and so the finders raised the alarm. Incredibly, the police said that the body could be that of a four to ten year old child. As it turned out later on, the child was only two. Nobody had missed him and it wasn’t until his grandmother recognised the suitcase that she came forward and identified the body.

One didn’t have to be a genius to work out that it was some family member who had done the deed. It usually is. The biggest clue was that nobody had reported his disappearance.

Anyway, it turns out it was the mother who had killed him “allegedly” while shaking little Dean Shillingsworth. The mother was known to Social Services as an abuser of drugs and children and now the extended family of Dean have decided to blame Social Services for failing to protect the child.

Like all Social Services around the developed world, the Department of Community Services is understaffed. After all, who would want to do that kind of job? Some people do have the fortitude and thanks to them we have a sort of monitor, inadequate though it is.

My question to Dean’s extended family is why did they sit back and do nothing to protect that little boy apart from complaining that they were concerned for his welfare? If that were happening to a member of my family then I would have done more than complain. I would have removed the child from my daughter’s home just to save his life. But this family did nothing more. And now they have the audacity to blame Social Services.

Let’s say that Social Services had removed Dean from his abusive mother then it would have been accused of stealing him from his people. You see, little Dean is an aboriginal child or indigenous, if you prefer to be politically correct. Frankly, I never saw anything wrong with the name “aboriginal” but what the heck, they can call themselves whatever they like. It’s their prerogative.

Several years ago, Australia suffered an attack of political correctness and blamed itself for having removed indigenous children from their mothers who were living in squalor. These children were called “The Stolen Generation” and it was decided that removing children from their parents, neglectful as they had been, was not a good thing.

So this is why nobody dared remove poor Dean from his abusive mother. Nobody wanted to be accused of being racist. Thus you could remove white children from neglectful parents but nobody wanted to become embroiled in another Stolen Generation fiasco.

It’s interesting how something that starts out looking very caring and considerate ends up as a failure. How often does political correctness bite one in the bum!

A good example of this is the current move to save indigenous children who, it turns out, have not been enjoying the rich culture of their tribes, unless one is referring to sexual abuse, alcoholism and petrol sniffing. Oh how the pendulum has swung back! There are now compulsory medical examinations of children and babies and even suggestions that perhaps they should be removed from their dangerous surroundings. Surely not the stolen generation all over again!

Could it be that some political correctness philes have finally realised that many abused children were rescued rather than stolen? I suspect that where political correctness is concerned it’s about perceptions and how things look. Things must look nice and pretty– bugger the reality! And it’s so important that they respect the indigenous culture even if it’s mired in alcoholic vomit and disease.

If you visit the pond where Dean’s body was thrown, you will find flowers and toys left as tributes by neighbours who were devastated by this tragedy. Nice gestures they may be but what good does it do for the poor child who should have been removed from his abusive surroundings before political correctness turned him into a statistic?