Do we need another inquiry into the death of Mason Lee?

Annastacia Palaszczuk has again demonstrated her flair for concealment when she instigated yet another inquiry into Mason Jet Lee. Do we really need another inquiry, asks Des Houghton.

ANNASTACIA Palaszczuk’s ability to conceal bad news from voters is her best, and perhaps her only talent. She has covered up policy failures across a range of state government responsibilities from health and welfare to transport, economic management and policing.

The Premier again demonstrated her flair for concealment this week when she instigated yet another inquiry into Mason Jet Lee, the tragic tot unprotected by his mother, Anne Maree Lee, and brutally killed by crazed ice addict William O’Sullivan, his stepfather.

Do we really need another inquiry? Already there have been inquiries by police, the Queensland Children’s’ Hospital, Department of Child Safety, Queensland Health’s Ethical Standards Unit, the Queensland Child Death Case Review Panel and the Queensland Family and Child Commission. And the Office of the State Coroner delivered its report this week with input from forensic psychologist Professor James Ogloff and Dr Andrew Whittaker, a child welfare expert from London’s South Bank University.

We know that Mason Jet Lee was “abused and neglected” and was just 22 months old when he died a “painful and prolonged death”. O’Sullivan and Lee were jailed.

Palaszczuk’s pointless inquiry is six years too late. It’s a new low in her dysfunctional and pointless government. It dishonours the boy’s memory.

The Premier’s new inquiry is not a bid to find the truth but a ploy to put her government’s child protection failures on the backburner until after the October election.

She has reneged on a promise to release the department’s 2017 internal report. Why?

Deputy state coroner Jane Bentley this week found fault with child safety officers involved in Mason’s case, saying they failed in “nearly every way possible”.

None of the 21 Department of Child Safety staff involved were sacked, with three having left of their own accord.

Inexplicably, the department even attempted to frustrate police inquiries by censoring files that would have assisted investigations.

Bentley said the department gave police a “heavily redacted” file on Mason Jet Lee’s injuries. “I find that it is inappropriate for departmental officers to make decisions about whether information should be redacted in the context of a police investigation,” she said.

She said Child Safety “failed to comply with its obligations to share information with police in accordance with the Child Protection Act.”

Bentley added: “I find that there was no logical reason why the department provided a redacted file to QPS when investigating officers were aware of the family dynamic and the names of Mason’s siblings and other family members. “Further, I find that it is inappropriate for departmental officers to make decisions about whether information should be redacted in the context of a police investigation. Such departmental employees are not investigators.”

Little Mason’s misfortune was that he was born to a woman unfit to be a mother. Dumped by her own mother when she was two, she was two, Anne Maree Louise Lee was abused by her father.

“He beat her with instruments including a riding crop, burnt her and choked her,” Bentley reported. Her father was later convicted and imprisoned for his abuse of his children.” Bentley added: “(Lee) eventually turned to drugs and sex with much older men and became homeless.”

She fell pregnant to a “violent and controlling” partner when she was 15 and was “under the influence of alcohol” when she went to hospital to have the child in 2005. She had four more children in abusive relationships and lived in “unhygienic and neglected households (with) lack of parental supervision, misuse of alcohol and drugs including intravenous use of amphetamine, physical abuse of the children, homelessness and limited support networks”.

Mason Lee's mother Anne Maree Lee.

O’Sullivan was sentenced by Chief Justice Catherine Holmes to nine years’ jail for manslaughter, but he may be out within two years because Holmes declined to declare him a serious violent offender.

Like Lee, he too had a tragic start in life.

Bentley said O’Sullivan was an only child whose mother left his violent father to marry another man when he was five.

His stepfather suffered from schizophrenia and abused alcohol. O’Sullivan was “subject to verbal and physical abuse” by his stepfather, “including being hit in the head, attempted strangulation and having his head hit repeatedly against a wall”.

Around the age of 14 he stopped going to school and started using drugs. She said he became addicted to methylamphetamine and from the age of 17 was living on the streets. He had little work history. He married in 2008 and there were four children to that marriage, including his son who lived with him at the time of Mason’s death.

He initially met Lee in 2014 and they both used methylamphetamine. He has a criminal history for drug offences, attempted robbery and a serious assault.

Andrew William O'Sullivan.

His drug use escalated in 2016 the year Mason was killed. His attacks on Mason were ferocious.

“Mason had suffered displacement of his large bowel and rectum, displaced fracture of his coccyx, a fracture of his tibia, 46 bruises to his body, mouth and ear ulcers, scalp haemorrhages consistent with head trauma and hair pulling and severe bowel injuries which led to infection of the peritoneum and sepsis,” said Bentley.

She concluded: “Regardless of Mason’s obvious need for urgent medical treatment Mr O’Sullivan left Mason to die in pain and misery, alone on his bedroom floor, and then waited for hours to alert the authorities to his tragic death.

“Mr O’Sullivan did not demonstrate any remorse for killing Mason, nor did he confess to causing the injuries to Mason. In fact, he denied doing anything to him which could have caused his fatal injuries. He attempted to blame Mason’s 11-year-old sister for causing the injuries, saying that she was evil.

“He blamed the paramedics for taking too long to arrive and said that the doctors he had taken Mason to see were negligent and so was Ms Lee.

“He said Mason had not been ill before he died. All of those statements were obviously untrue. The only person who caused Mason’s injuries was Mr O’Sullivan.”

Little Mason Lee didn’t stand a chance.

Mason didn’t stand a chance. The welfare gravy train allowed his mother to have more and more children.

What signs of hope came from this tragedy? Not many that I can think of.

I hate to say it, but the little fellow died in vain.

Des Houghton is a media consultant and former editor of The Courier-Mail and the Sunday Mail. Contact him at houghtonmedia.com.au