Daily Telegraph Editorial: God bless all the police involved in finding Cleo Smith

Great work from West Australian police has ensured that the case of missing girl Cleo Smith did not go the way of most missing persons cases, writes The Daily Telegraph.

The moment police rescued Cleo Smith, 18 days after they say she was taken from her family's tent. Picture: WA Police

Reports of missing children very often end in tragedy. The likelihood of such a dreadful outcome ­increases with every hour a child is missing.

By yesterday, four-year-old Western Australian girl Cleo Smith had been missing for 18 whole days after being abducted from her family’s campsite.

In terms of child abduction cases, 18 days is an eternity.

Police working on Cleo’s case must have been bracing themselves for the worst possible outcome, even as the little girl’s anguished family clung to hope.

Then a miracle occurred.

No – it was better than a miracle. Days of hard work and tireless, determined investigations finally paid off. And how.

Not too far from her parents’ home, Cleo Smith was found alive and well in a locked room inside a locked house.

“I asked her what her name was,” Detective Senior Sergeant Cameron Blaine, the first officer to enter that room, told media on Wednesday.

“I just wanted to be absolutely sure,” Blaine said. “It certainly looked like Cleo.”

He asked her three times ­before the little girl answered.

“She looked at me and said ‘My name is Cleo’ and that was it,” Blaine said.

“Then we turned around and walked out of that house. Not long after that, (we) got into the car and the officer I was with … called Cleo’s parents and said: ‘We’ve got someone here who wants to speak to you’.”

Police are trained to cope with the stress and pain of delivering bad news. They receive rather less training for circumstances such as they experienced yesterday.

Understandably, all police ­involved were absolutely overcome with emotion.

During a call to NSW Police Commissioner Mick Fuller, his Western Australian counterpart Chris Dawson told him he’d wept with elation on hearing of Cleo’s rescue.

“He said when he got the call this morning he broke down and cried,” Fuller reported.

“For a veteran in policing, it just speaks volumes in terms of the amount of effort they put in to finding her.

“You wouldn’t see too many tears from commissioners these days.”

Incidentally, the four officers who found Cleo during that house search are fathers themselves. God bless them all, and their dedicated colleagues.

MAYOR KNOWS AUSTRALIA DAY’S WORTH

Sir Isaac Newton’s third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This applies as much in Australian society as it does in physics.

Consider how various Sydney councils are planning to celebrate – or not celebrate – Australia Day next year.

Inner West Council, which has previously claimed Euro­pean settlement brought “despair and widespread disad­vantage” to Indigenous people, won’t mark our national day with any kind of fanfare.

And the Hills Shire Council has announced it won’t be host a big celebration on January 26 due to Covid – despite the big day being nearly three months away, and full vaccinations across NSW already reaching nearly 90 per cent.

That’s the action. Now, thankfully, comes the equal and opposite reaction.

Cumberland Council mayor Steve Christou said his region will celebrate Australia Day. Picture: Monique Harmer

Cumberland Council mayor Steve Christou, the son of Greek Cypriot refugees, is now planning a “bigger and better” Australia Day festival.

Christou’s council area, which includes the migrant-heavy suburbs of Merrylands and Granville, can look forward to a proper celebration of our national day – in contrast to residents of other councils.

And Christou wasn’t done there. He’s also taken aim at councils that talk down and diminish Australia Day.

“The decision by the Hills Shire Council to scale back Australia Day celebrations is un-Australian, lazy, and a perfect example of bed-wetting at its finest,” Christou said.

“Australia Day is the biggest national holiday of the year and something we all should be proud of as a nation.

“Instead, every November, December we seem to have the doomsayers like Inner West Council wanting to trash Australia Day altogether.

“I am fed up with this kind of treachery.”

He’s not alone.

Indeed, many people living in Sydney’s woke suburbs may be inclined to cross a council boundary or two on January 26 so they can enjoy the day among like-minded patriots.

Or they could drive inland or to the South or Central Coasts, where Australia Day has never been polluted by politics.

Life is surprisingly sane once you escape from Wokeville. ­Beyond that region’s negativity and bigotry, people simply treat each other as fellow Aussies.

Anthony Albanese has badly misread the mood

It is the instinct of many politicians to immediately and reflexively take the opposite view of whatever their opponent does.

But the best politicians know that instant opposition is not ­always the wisest strategy.

There are some moments when politicians have to put that adversarial instinct aside and act in the interests of the greater good.

Such a moment occurred when French President Emmanuel Macron accused Prime Minister Scott Morrison of lying over the now-abandoned French submarine deal.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese had a clear choice.

He could go with his base automatic political instinct and side with the Frenchman against Scott Morrison.

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has sided with France in its dispute with the Australian government. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Bianca De Marchi

Or, alternatively, he could side with the Australian government against the French.

Regrettably, Albanese chose the former option.

“Australians need a leader who can be trusted, and the world needs to be able to trust the Australian Prime Minister,” Albanese said on Monday.

“But President Macron has made a very clear and unequivocal statement about what was said to him in meetings just prior to tearing up of that contract between Australia and France.

“Diplomacy is important; it’s important Australians have a leader on the world stage who is trusted on that stage, whose word can be counted.”

So now we have an Australian Labor leader taking the word of a French politician over the word of Australia’s PM.

It takes a lot to out-surrender the French. But by giving in to his need to score political points, Albanese has done it. He put up absolutely no resistance at all.

Nor does Albanese appear to have a full awareness of just how useless that French subs deal was, and how beneficial for Australia it is that the deal is dead.

Acting Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce yesterday put French surliness over the sunken subs in perfect context.

“We didn’t steal an island. We didn’t deface the Eiffel Tower,” Joyce said. “It was a contract.”

Exactly. And if Albanese thinks a mere contact is reason enough to turn towards France and against Australia, he is badly misreading the broader Australian mood.

There are not a lot of Australian votes in Paris. But you can lose a lot of votes in Australia by being a French fan boy.

Inside Daddy Dom’s normal life

Decades of political movies and television dramas have generated a false impression of politicians’ daily lives.

It isn’t all high-powered meetings, political strategies and tactical intrigue.

For Premier Dominic Perrottet, the most powerful politician in NSW, daily life also involves making school lunches.

“It’s definitely a mix of who does what, there are no clear cut roles,” Helen Perrottet told The Daily Telegraph of her family’s typical routine.

“Dom does lunches and washing and cooking and sorting the kids out and usually if he’s around he will take the kids to get shoes from Kmart or doing the sport run or whatever,” she said.

“I do a fair bit of work on the weekends and Dom takes the kids.”

And, just by-the-by, he also runs Australia’s largest and most important

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Flavio Brancaleone

state.

Interestingly, rather than having to put politics aside when he’s in family mode, Perrottet is informed politically by his domestic experiences.

Popular “active kids” and “creative kids” vouchers, for example, were pushed by Perrottet during his time as Treasurer.

Treasury were initially opposed to the vouchers, but Perrottet kept arguing in their favour. As he explains: “I was confident in my perspective on these which was gained from personal experience.”

That perspective also informs Perrottet’s broader views on family stress and related issues.

“Cost of living is incredibly important and a priority, but that’s too simplistic,” he said of his declared ambition to be a “Premier for families”.

“The pressures of family life are much deeper than that. It’s about making life easier when it comes to childcare, schooling, before and after school care. It’s about making life easier for families in all the ways possible.”

That family-first worldview is a useful one as NSW emerges from lockdowns and limits. Political theories don’t count for much when what we really need is informed leadership.

As The Daily Telegraph has previously noted, these times may very well suit Premier Perrottet. His pro-business, pro-freedom approach ties in perfectly with NSW’s post-lockdown mood for progress.

He’s made a great start. Now he needs to continue in that same optimistic spirit.

The Daily Telegraph, printed and published by the proprietor, Nationwide News Pty Ltd A.C.N. 008438828 of 2 Holt St, Surry Hills NSW 2010, at 26-52 Hume Highway, Chullora. Responsibility for election comment is taken by the Editor, Ben English.