The State Government’s child protection mess reached another low today, with Premier Jay Weatherill having to call the grandmother of the late Chloe Valentine to apologise for an upsetting gaffe.

Tom Richardson asks: how did it come to this?

It was an extraordinary admission.

Jay Weatherill conceded there was a crisis in the child protection system over which he presides.

It was a frank, stark response.

“I accept my responsibilities for the children in my care, and we are taking steps to address those very issues,” he told parliament when asked about the fraught state of child protection.

“Indeed, at a public forum just a few days ago, I admitted that the child protection system is in crisis, and it is.”

This was, of course, back in May 2004, when Weatherill was a relatively new minister for Families and Communities.

In such a situation, you need have no compunction about deeming the child protection system in crisis, because you can pin its shoddy state – indeed, “the culture that has been endemic within these agencies” – on the previous Liberal administration.

Some might say that is playing politics, but no doubt Weatherill would argue it is merely calling a spade a spade.

It was, he went on, a culture that “existed among people at the most senior levels of government — and I am talking now of a period prior to our term of office — where they simply did not want to hear the truth about child protection and they went to extraordinary lengths to prevent themselves being told the truth”.

Belinda Valentine saw none of this. She merely saw Weatherill on the news, telling her – as she saw it – that there was a special place in hell reserved for her.

How extraordinary? According to Weatherill circa 2004, “senior members of advisory bodies sought to communicate to the previous government that this system was in crisis and … emissaries were sent by the previous government to tell them that they should not use inflammatory remarks to describe the child protection system”.

“They set up structures to ensure that those agencies could not get the message through,” he said.

“That is the way the previous government dealt with child protection—cover-ups and lies. They created a culture of bullying and cover-up.”

Weatherill no longer publicly concedes the system is in crisis, despite the fact after numerous inquiries – both independent and parliamentary – various scandals and multiple sackings and resignations, child protection continues to dog his Government like no other issue.

Like the mythical Hydra, it seems you can remove one head from the besieged agency and another emerges to take its place, and the challenge remains just as ominous as before. For it is not the head, but the body, that is broken.

Weatherill, though, believes – and stated in 2013 – that through these various changes “we have done more to shine a light on the evil of child sexual abuse in this state than any other government that has come before us or any other government around our nation”.

Yesterday, Liberal leader Steven Marshall joined independents Nick Xenophon and John Darley in calling for the Government to finally establish a Children’s Commissioner, a measure recommended by Robyn Layton, who authored this Government’s very first report into child protection way back in 2003. Belinda Valentine, whose grand-daughter Chloe was infamously killed in the lax care of her neglectful mother Ashlee Polkinghorne and her boyfriend Benjamin McPartland, stood alongside them.

In a subsequent media conference, Weatherill angrily snapped that “there is a special place in hell reserved for people who play politics with child sexual abuse, and I’m sick of it”.

Later, in parliament, he went further, explaining that rather than having introduced a children’s commissioner with advocacy – but no investigatory – powers, in line with Layton’s recommendation, the Government had “changed the role of two bodies – the Child Protection Advisory Council and the Children’s Interest Bureau – into one body called the Council for the Care and Protection of Children, which had advocacy powers on behalf of children, very similar to the sorts of things recommended by Robyn Layton”.

If the system was, by Weatherill’s own admission, in crisis a decade ago, it must remain so today.

Now, however, either from reasoned argument or political pressure, the Government has (sort of) acquiesced to introduce a Children’s Commissioner, but the parliament cannot agree on a model. Labor withdrew its own bill, and won’t progress the Liberals’. According to Weatherill (but denied by Marshall) it was agreed between parties that “we should await the outcome of recommendations” from Margaret Nyland, who is overseeing the latest inquiry, a royal commission, “because these matters can be put before the commissioner and a sensible recommendation made”.

“Why on earth would you not accept that proposition?” Weatherill called across the chamber yesterday.

“I will tell why you would not: if someone who was deeply affected by these matters decides to approach you and says the children’s commissioner should be advanced with investigative powers, and you decide to stand up next to them at a news conference to get a cheap, political point. That is where we are today. It is a disgrace.”

Belinda Valentine saw none of this. She merely saw Weatherill on the news, telling her – as she saw it – that there was a special place in hell reserved for her.

Her young sons Scott and Chad saw it too, and the latter spent the night in tears. Already struggling with night terrors since Chloe’s death, he had found some peace in the concept that his niece was in heaven, where the family would one day be reconciled.

The matter was raised on ABC radio this morning, after which the Premier contacted Valentine to apologise.

It was a constructive discussion, although Valentine maintained when I spoke to her later that Weatherill’s were “very ill-chosen words for a leader of our state”.

“Whether they were directed at me personally, or a political party, or independents, they were very ill-chosen.”

Those types of words, she said – bullying words – “should never be directed at anybody”.

“He did apologise for that, which I appreciated.”

Valentine still wants a Children’s Commissioner established, as when authorities were failing to adequately respond to notifications about Chloe’s safety, “we didn’t have somewhere to go”.

“I don’t know what the correct model will be to put forward, because I’m not an expert in that field: I just believe there needs to be somewhere you can go where you can voice a concern and look at it with fresh eyes,” she told me.

The episode was, she reflected, a “good lesson for me”, in publicly expressing a personal viewpoint.

“I have to be careful to make sure I don’t look like I’m aligning myself with a political agenda, because we want to do something positive and pro-active, and we need to have positive pro-active relationships to do that.”

Valentine wants more compassion in the public discourse about what is, after all, a public policy of which compassion is at the heart.

“I’m trying to be very careful about not attacking anybody,” she said.

“When you attack anybody, they defend themselves, and that (approach) is not going to produce long-lasting changes.”

It was, after 13 years, perhaps the most insightful conclusion to draw about the politics of child protection in this state.

If the system was, by Weatherill’s own admission, in crisis a decade ago, it must remain so today.

It may be more visible, more accountable, better understood, but there is clearly still a fundamental failure of process.

That much hasn’t changed, and nor has the political point-scoring. On either side.

Tom Richardson is a senior journalist at InDaily. His political column is published on Fridays.