18/02/2026
A TRAGEDY THAT DEMANDS MORE THAN DEFLECTION
When systems fail, people and governments cannot avoid the reckoning that must follow.
I want to start by saying this was hard to write. I began drafting it shortly after the news broke, but it took far longer than I expected to reach this point, including a significant part of last night. The role of Hal needs to be acknowledged here. Hal reminded me to set aside anger and frustration and to approach this with compassion and a genuine attempt to understand rather than simply react.
I have not personally had to navigate the NDIS, but I know far too many people who do, and I am yet to hear a genuinely positive experience. The scheme was introduced with good intent, but it now feels more than ever like a fix that has failed too many of the people it was meant to support. One of its deepest flaws appears to be the lack of separation within government between those tasked with policing the system and those meant to provide support. This mirrors the long-standing problem seen with Centrelink, where enforcement and care are entangled in ways that undermine both, creating a culture that struggles to protect people while also failing to administer the system effectively.
The scheme also shares frustrations common to health funding, particularly the blurred responsibilities between state and federal governments. This fragmentation too often turns support into a political weapon rather than a shared responsibility. At times, it feels as though political energy is spent more on managing narratives and deflecting blame than on centring the people the system exists to support.
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
By The Barefoot Nurse, with help from Hal, our Editor
Based on reporting by Rhiannon Shine and Isabel Moussalli, ABC News
This is a difficult piece to read and an even harder one to write. For those who knew Leon and Otis Clune, for those who worked with their family, and for the many Australians who live and work inside the disability system every day, this tragedy cuts deeply. It deserves care, restraint, and humanity before it ever invites politics.
Two teenage boys, Leon Clune, aged sixteen, and Otis Clune, aged fourteen, were found dead in their Mosman Park home alongside their parents, Jarrod Clune and Maiwenna Goasdoue, in what police suspect was a double murder su***de. The loss of two children who did not choose to die is an unspeakable tragedy. Nothing written here should be read as an attempt to explain away violence or soften its horror.
At the same time, tragedies of this scale force societies to ask difficult questions about the systems meant to prevent families from reaching breaking point. Avoiding those questions does not honour the dead. It risks repeating the conditions that failed them.
DANGEROUS NARRATIVES AND WHY THEY MATTER
Australia’s Disability Discrimination Commissioner, Rosemary Kayess, was swift and right to condemn the narratives that began to emerge almost immediately. She warned against any framing that treats disability as a justification for violence or portrays children with disability as an unbearable burden.
This narrative is not new. It has appeared after similar tragedies before. Each time it resurfaces, it subtly devalues the lives of people with disability by shifting focus away from violence and toward perceived inconvenience.
Kayess made the point clearly. Families face adversity every day without resorting to harm. Disability does not excuse violence. Crisis demands support, not rationalisation.
That message was echoed by Children and Young People with Disability Australia CEO Skye Kakoschke Moore, who emphasised that children with disability are not burdens. Their lives have value. Their deaths must be acknowledged with dignity rather than framed through the lens of difficulty or strain.
WHERE THE ANGER IS COMING FROM
Public reaction following the tragedy has been raw and immediate. Hundreds of parents of children with disability responded to official statements that help is available by saying plainly that it is not. Waiting lists are long. Funding decisions are contested. Evidence is repeatedly demanded. Supports arrive late or not at all.
This despair did not appear overnight. It has been building for years.
The National Disability Insurance Scheme was designed to provide certainty, dignity, and support. For many families, it has become a source of exhaustion and fear. The system is complex, bureaucratic, and often adversarial. Frontline workers have been warning for years that the fix has not fixed enough.
This is why calls for a public coronial inquest, supported by Kayess and local MP Sandra Brewer, matter. Inquests do not assign blame. They examine systems. They expose gaps. They generate recommendations that can save lives if governments choose to act on them.
WHEN GOVERNMENTS MEASURE OTHERS AND THEN THEMSELVES
There is an uncomfortable tension here that cannot be ignored. The current federal government was quick, and rightly so, to condemn its predecessor over Robodebt. That scheme prioritised automated systems over human lives. It punished vulnerability. It dismissed warnings from within the system. It caused real harm. That condemnation established a standard.
When tragedies occur in spaces governed by public systems, governments cannot retreat into deflection without undermining their own credibility. The instinct to say investigations are ongoing and cooperation is full may be procedurally correct, but it is emotionally hollow when communities are crying out that they have been saying the same things for years.
This is not an argument that the government caused this tragedy. It is an argument that the government must apply the same moral lens it once demanded of others.
THE QUESTION OF FUNDING AND THE QUESTION OF CHOICE
One of the most persistent frustrations voiced by people inside the disability sector is not simply mismanagement. It is political choice.
Australia can afford to fully fund the NDIS. That statement is not radical. It is arithmetic. The country gives away enormous value in natural resources through royalty structures that consistently favour extraction over reinvestment. Profits flow outward while essential supports are rationed inward. Funding disability properly is not a matter of capacity. It is a matter of priority.
Governments regularly argue that spending must be restrained to protect the budget. At the same time, they maintain systems that allow extraordinary private wealth to be generated from public assets. Those two positions cannot be reconciled without acknowledging who bears the cost.
SYSTEMS DO NOT FEEL PRESSURE, PEOPLE DO
Premier Roger Cook and Federal Disability Minister Mark Butler have both urged patience as investigations continue. Procedurally, that is understandable. Morally, it sits uncomfortably alongside years of warnings from families and workers that the system is under strain.
Systems can absorb delay. People cannot. The disability royal commission concluded in 2023 that people with disabilities are systematically devalued. Its recommendations were meant to mark a turning point. The fear now is that without sustained political will, those recommendations will join a long list of reports that described the problem accurately and changed little.
WHAT THIS MOMENT DEMANDS
This tragedy does not justify violence. It does not indict individual workers. It does not provide a neat political villain. What it demands is honesty. Honesty about whether the NDIS is meeting its promise. Honesty about whether warnings from inside the system are being heard. Honesty about whether funding choices reflect stated values. Honesty about whether governments are willing to confront structural failure rather than manage headlines.
The danger lies not in asking these questions, but in refusing to.
If Robodebt taught Australia anything, it was that systems designed without humanity can destroy lives. The lesson only matters if it is applied consistently.
Leon and Otis deserved lives defined by possibility, not by the limitations of support. Families across Australia deserve a system that intervenes before crisis becomes catastrophe.
Acknowledgement is not blame. Reflection is not accusation. Accountability is not cruelty.
This is a tragedy. It should also be a line in the sand.
If not now, then when.
