Vicki Blackburn put it best. Her daughter Shandee’s murder in a frenzied knife attack in the Queensland sugar and mining town of Mackay nine years ago was a shocking waste of a young life – but from this slaying, there will be an enduring and positive legacy.
This legacy will come from a far-reaching royal commission-style inquiry run by one of Queensland’s most eminent legal figures, Walter Sofronoff QC, the newly retired Court of Appeal president and a former solicitor-general.
Shandee’s legacy will be in all the findings and lessons from his inquiry, with its potential to leave an indelible stamp on Queensland’s criminal justice system, affording victims of crime a much better chance of seeing their attackers caught.
It can make communities safer because more dangerous predators will be behind bars thanks to the DNA having been detected at crime scenes, rather than enjoying freedom because of avoidable failure in testing in the state’s DNA laboratory.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s confidence in Sofronoff is such that he is drawing the terms of reference for an inquiry in which the lab now goes under the microscope.
This inquiry will also have the extremely valuable benefit of looking at all the remarkable work done over the past 12 months by a scientist whose brilliance and courage have got us to this point.
Forensic scientist Kirsty Wright began analysing hundreds of pages of forensic files and documents for me in June last year at an early stage of my investigation for The Australian’s podcast, Shandee’s Story. The grave concerns Wright has held for a long time about the lab – concerns also shared around the water-cooler for years by other forensic biologists, police detectives and scientific officers but never properly pursued – were catalysed by the evidence she saw in Shandee’s case.
Wright’s commitment to truth and her willingness to publicly highlight the lab’s conduct has been inspirational.
Very few scientists would be as persistent and determined, in my view. There would be no inquiry without her unstinting efforts.
The seriousness of the DNA issues that Wright started highlighting very clearly in the Shandee’s Story podcast – and in the pages of The Australian – in November last year was not refuted by the lab. The implications were always grave.
For these reasons, it is confusing that it has taken seven months for the government to finally yield to common sense and call this inquiry.
The Premier and her Health Minister, Yvette D’Ath, should have responded much sooner.
Perhaps they were getting very poor departmental advice – all of which should be flushed out by the inquiry‘s investigators.
They got there in the end. And with a commitment to a “lock, stock and barrel” implementation of all that comes from Sofronoff’s work. That’s Shandee’s legacy.
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