Election 2022: Grieving dad’s challenge for leaders

Four years after the shooting deaths of his four young children a WA father is calling for an inquiry into the way in which family breakups are managed.

Aaron Cockman. May 11 will mark four years since he lost his four children after they were killed, together with their mother and grandmother, by their grandfather. Picture: Marie Nirme

Four years after the shooting deaths of his four young children a WA father is calling on Scott Morrison and Anthony Albanese to launch an inquiry into the way in which family breakups are managed.

The children of Aaron Cockman – Taye, 13, Rylan, 12, Arye, 10, and Kadyn, 8 – were killed by their maternal grandfather, Peter Miles, on a rural property at Osmington, near Margaret River, on May 11, 2018. Their mother Katrina and her mother Cynda were also killed before Miles phoned the police and then turned the gun on ­himself.

“Will you step up for my children – and for all Australian children?” Mr Cockman asked in a letter sent to the leaders on Tuesday. “Separating families really don’t belong in family courts. ­Adversarial, stressful courts are not the right way to deal with vulnerable families – especially where there are any pre-existing risks of violence, addiction or mental health issues.

“Are you willing to launch an inquiry into the harm to children caused by our current approach to family breakups – one that sees lawyers and family court systems, instead of more appropriate health professionals and experts, at the centre of a public health crisis that directly affects one third of all our children?”

Mr Cockman has been pleading for an inquiry since the WA state coroner refused to conduct a public inquest into the children’s deaths on the grounds that the purpose of such an investigation was to provide information that had not already been disclosed or made available.

The coroner found that the cause and manner of the children’s deaths had been determined through police reports and other material. Regarding Mr Cockman’s concerns about the family law system, she found the Coroners Court of WA would not have been able to make recommendation about the operation of another court in another jurisdiction.

At that time The Australian reported the court had sent four short “records of investigation” into the deaths of the children to Mr Cockman but not released them publicly. They concluded the children died from gunshots to the head inflicted by Miles in the early hours of the morning.

WA Attorney-General John Quigley then sought legal advice about overruling the coroner’s ­decision but was advised he did not have the power to do so. Instead he wrote to the community development and justice standing committee in October that year asking that it consider conducting a formal inquiry into Mr Cockman’s concerns.

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