Expecting the impossible

Published: December 20, 2007, 8:57 pm

Two stories about child abuse have been running for most of 2007. One concerned abuse of children in indigenous communities, with a special focus on sexual abuse. The other was about all forms of abuse in NSW, with no attention to any particular groups within the community (although the media attention was much greater and more intrusive when an indigenous child was involved). Several themes have run through both stories: (1) They represent gross failures on the part of the government agencies concerned (although the calls for ministerial accountability have been rather more muted); (2) They are primarily law enforcement issues; (3) Someone needs to get in and ‘fix the problem’. The assumptions that underpin these themes are highly questionable. For example, by calling for governments to ‘fix the problem’, people are assuming that governments can fix the problem. ‘Ought implies can’, in other words. But what if governments can’t? Much public

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