Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that this article contains the names of people who have died. Their grandmother has asked for their names to be used.

Their grandmother asked the state's child protection department five times to let her keep them. Police referred the family. The housing department asked for a visit. Eight days before they died, the department decided a child safety investigation was warranted, and it never started. Four years after Jamelia, Arnda and Kelvin Hawke were murdered by their mother in Port Hedland, the case is back in the WA Parliament, and the minister responsible cannot say whether anything the department promised to fix has been fixed.

Dusk on the highway at Port Hedland, July 2023. Photo: Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, resized.

What happened on 19 July 2022

It was a Tuesday afternoon. Jamelia, 10, and Arnda, 7, had just been dropped home from school to the family's house at 101B Anderson Street, Port Hedland. Their brother Kelvin was four months old. Their mother, Margaret Dale Hawke, was coming down from days of methamphetamine use compounded by alcohol, cannabis and benzodiazepines. The night before, she had walked the three children to the women's refuge in Port Hedland and asked to be taken in. The refuge told her it had no room and put her in a taxi home.

The next afternoon she told the children she loved them and asked them to forgive her, then killed all three and set the house on fire. She pleaded guilty to three counts of murder. On 5 May 2023 Justice Michael Lundberg of the WA Supreme Court, the state's first Aboriginal Supreme Court judge and himself raised in Port Hedland, sentenced her to life imprisonment with a minimum of 25 years, plus a further term for the arson. "No sentence I impose can bring back your three children," he told her, "or undo the devastating and enduring consequences for your children's family and the community."

The court heard she had been assaulted by her parents from the age of seven, stabbed, punched and beaten with golf clubs by partners, and that a partner's bashing had cost her a 13-week pregnancy. The magazine feature that later reopened the case adds that the father of her youngest child was charged over that assault in 2020, that the father of her two eldest children introduced her to meth, and that another partner's assaults left her in hospital for months at a time. When she brought Kelvin home from hospital in February 2022 she asked to stay at an Aboriginal hostel because her house was in poor condition. Justice Lundberg put it to her plainly: "you were not given approval by the Department of Communities to attend an Aboriginal hostel given you had a house and family support".

Outside court her family said she should never be released. The Anderson Street house has been demolished. The block is to become a community garden.

What the department knew

None of what follows was aired at the sentencing. It came out on 22 August this year, when The Australian Weekend Magazine published a feature by Perth journalist Ros Thomas, built on interviews with the children's grandmother, Dorothy Papertalk, and on internal records of the Department of Communities, which has run child protection in WA since 2017, that the magazine had seen. Ms Papertalk, 57, a Yamatji-Wajarri woman who has lived in South Hedland for 42 years, decided enough time had passed for her grandchildren's names to be made public. Her summary of the department: "They had me. But they just pushed all my papers under their carpet."

The records, as reported by the magazine, run like this.

• 2016. Child protection caseworkers were already questioning Margaret Hawke's ability to care for her children, six years before they died.
• 25 February 2020. Ms Papertalk and her younger daughter met a caseworker and said Margaret "was spending all her money on drugs and not buying the children any food". It was the first of at least five formal appeals to the department's South Hedland district office to move Jamelia and Arnda into her care. A fortnight later the department concluded that Margaret's "inability to provide adequate care for the children was, in the Department's view, mitigated because the children mostly lived with Dorothy". The children were "not at risk", and the grandmother's concerns "did not meet the threshold for an 'intake'".
• April 2020. The Department of Housing complained about drinking and parties at the house and asked child protection to make a visit. The visit never happened.
• 4 March 2021. Port Hedland police made a formal referral to the department after "numerous" incidents in which Margaret and her partner "were not feeding the children due to alcohol and drug consumption".
• 29 April 2021. A police report recorded a child caller, Jamelia, ringing from a street payphone to say "her mum was getting hurt by a man with a golf putter and she can't walk". Her grandmother had taught her how to use the payphone up the street, to get her brother and to run.
• 24 May 2021. Another police report: a barefoot child, Jamelia, hiding in the storeroom of a Shell service station while her mother chased her, shouting.
• 11 July 2022. Police were called after Margaret hit Jamelia in the face with a rock. The department's own assessment recorded that Jamelia had disclosed "that her mother hits her and drags her by the hair", that both older children said they felt unsafe, and that all three had been collected by Ms Papertalk. It concluded: "Based on the clear disclosure, previous concerns of a similar nature, violence in the home, and drug [sic], further assessment is warranted and the matter will be intake [sic] to a Child Safety Investigation."
• 14 July 2022. Margaret arrived at her mother's house and took the children back. "They didn't want to go with her," Ms Papertalk said, "but there was nothing I could do."
• 19 July 2022. The children were killed.

Across those years, the magazine said it had seen at least 22 incident reports of domestic violence in which Margaret or the children were the victims, and that on at least 17 occasions police had responded to Ms Papertalk's calls for help, as well as to Jamelia's calls from the payphone.

The child safety investigation ordered on 11 July did not begin before the children died. What Parliament has since been told is that the instruction to start it was an email that sat unopened for eight days. Deputy Opposition Leader Libby Mettam put it to the Assembly on 9 September that it "sat unopened in the inbox of a staff member who was on leave". The department's own internal review, according to the magazine, records "a miscommunication in which a 'critical email remained unopened'".

The reviews nobody outside government has read

Three bodies have had the case. Nothing any of them produced has been published.

The internal review. In July 2024, two years after the deaths, the department completed a "Case Practice Review" of its involvement with the family. The magazine reported it contains at least 11 adverse findings, including a "failure to consult with the Legal Unit regarding viability of a (Child) Protection Order", a "failure to undertake a pattern-based approach to assessment of risk", a "failure to supply suitably qualified staff which adversely impacted case management", a "failure of the team to contact Dorothy Papertalk to undertake verbal safety planning" and a "failure to adequately partner with Dorothy Papertalk and understand how the Department could support her". The department has not released it. Fiona Low, a senior lawyer who took on Ms Papertalk's case pro bono at the request of the Aboriginal Family Law Service, says she met the department's legal director in 2023 and asked for the records; "those documents were never provided to me by DCP".

The Ombudsman. The WA Ombudsman reviews the death of any child where concerns about that child, or a child relative, were reported to the Department of Communities in the two years before the death. The government has confirmed a statutory child death review was done. Its findings have not been made public either; the Ombudsman publishes its child death reviews only in aggregate.

The coroner. Ms Papertalk asked for an inquest. The coroner declined. Had the children been in state care when they died, an inquest would have been compulsory. They were not. Section 22 of the Coroners Act 1996 also requires a coroner to hold an inquest where "the Attorney General so directs" or "the State Coroner so directs", and gives a coroner the discretion to hold one "if the coroner believes it is desirable". Ms Mettam told the Assembly on 9 September that Grant Donaldson SC, the former Solicitor-General of Western Australia, has called it "absurd" for the government to claim it cannot order one. Federal Liberal MP Julian Leeser has called on the Attorney General to direct an inquest, saying the failure "warrants nothing less". The government has not.

The department's statement to the magazine was that child protection decisions are "frequently complex and nuanced", that "the priority is always to keep children safely at home with family and any decision to take children into care is always made as a last resort", and that "Communities continues to learn from this tragedy".

A former director-general of the department, speaking anonymously, gave the magazine a blunter view: "If Dorothy Papertalk's grandchildren had been living in Perth it's almost certain they would have been removed from their mother's care." Denis Reynolds, President of the Children's Court of WA for 14 years, said the issues in child protection "are the same now as they were over 40 years ago" and called for an independent taskforce. Ms Papertalk's own answer to the argument she keeps hearing, that removing Aboriginal children risks another Stolen Generation: "Well at least our children would be alive. Alive and beautiful."

Parliament House, Perth. The magazine noted that in the four years after the murders the case "was not discussed in state or federal parliament". Since 8 September it has been raised in both houses in each sitting week. Photo: Steelkamp, CC BY-SA 4.0, resized.

What has happened in Parliament

The feature ran on Saturday 22 August. Five days later, on 27 August, the Minister for Child Protection, Jessica Stojkovski, ordered a further review. Parliament did not learn that until the following month.

8 September. In the Legislative Council, Liberal MLC Michelle Hofmann asked how many findings the internal review and the Ombudsman's review had produced, whether any were outstanding, and whether the internal review would be tabled. The answer, delivered on the minister's behalf: the information "cannot be provided in this limited timeframe". She was invited to put the question on notice.

9 September. Ms Mettam asked the minister in the Assembly how she could maintain confidence in a system that decided the children warranted an investigation and then failed to start it. Ms Stojkovski replied that the deaths were "an unimaginable tragedy", that "the Department of Communities accepts that there were failings in its involvement with this family", and that she had "ordered an internal review to ensure that the findings have been implemented and that the changes have been made in the department". Ms Mettam's follow-up was whether all the recommendations from the two earlier reviews had in fact been implemented. The minister: "That is what I have required the review to tell me." When Ms Mettam interjected that it was years ago, she answered: "The member is correct. It was years ago. This was concluded before I was the child protection minister."

Ms Stojkovski was sworn in as Minister for Child Protection on 19 March 2025. The government has since told the Council she was first briefed on the Hawke case in July 2025.

The same afternoon, the Council passed an opposition motion expressing "grave concern at the unsatisfactory performance of the Minister for Child Protection", on a different matter: a Children's Court judgment of 5 June that found the department's cultural plans for a seven-year-old boy in care were "inadequate and largely meaningless rhetoric". The minister had admitted reading only parts of it. The motion passed, as amended, on the voices.

15 September. In the Council, Ms Hofmann asked who was doing the new review and when it would report. The answers: it was ordered on 27 August; it is being conducted by the Nous Group, a consultancy, and Dr Kate Alexander, chief executive of Barnardos Australia, who established the Office of the Senior Practitioner at the NSW Department of Communities and Justice; it is due on 31 October 2026. Asked whether the document commissioning it would be tabled, the government said any decision on release "will be made at that time". Liberal MLC Nick Goiran asked whether anyone had faced disciplinary or performance action over the failure to start the investigation. The answer: the earlier reviews "identified systemic issues rather than failures attributable to individual staff members".

Two things are worth noticing about the new review. On 9 September the minister called it "an internal review"; by 15 September it was an external consultancy and an interstate expert. And it is not a review of the deaths, which the earlier reviews covered. It is an assurance review: a check on whether the findings of those earlier reviews were implemented and are making a difference. If the government tables it, it will be the first document about this case the public has seen.

Also on 15 September, in the Assembly, Ms Mettam pointed to the headline of a follow-up piece in The Australian: "I want that apology." She asked whether the minister was sorry that Ms Papertalk's five appeals were ignored and that "this department for child protection and family support left unopened for eight days an email raising the alarm about the safety of those children". Ms Stojkovski, who had flown to Port Hedland the previous day, said she had met Ms Papertalk there: "I apologised to her. It was the first thing that came out of my mouth. I said, 'Dorothy, please come and sit next to me and I want to start.'" She also announced she had directed the department's chief practitioner to oversee every child safety investigation in Port Hedland until the end of the year, and set up a new interagency coordination group for children at risk of harm there.

16 September. Mr Zempilas listed the failures and asked "how many warnings involving vulnerable children have to be ignored under the minister's watch before she accepts ministerial responsibility and resigns?" She did not resign. After Thursday's sitting Parliament does not meet again until 13 October, eighteen days before the review is due.

Frisby Court

There is a reason this story has not stayed in 2022. Ms Papertalk has lived for 18 years in Frisby Court, a cul-de-sac of 21 houses in South Hedland. It is the same street where, on 12 September, The Australian reported that as many as 15 children, the youngest five and seven, had been living without adult supervision for up to a week at a time in a Department of Housing and Works property. That report is what put the minister on a plane to Port Hedland on 14 September. She has since disputed the number and the claim that the children were unsupervised for days, and has refused to give "running commentary" on the family, citing the Children and Community Services Act. Five questions about the house, 21 parts in all, were refused in the Council on 15 September on privacy grounds.

What was answered tells its own story about the South Hedland district office, the one Ms Papertalk petitioned. The department's South Hedland child protection office has an approved establishment of 38 full-time positions and 27.84 filled. Of its 14.4 frontline practitioner positions, 4.8 are vacant, and have been for 138, 101, 71, 42 and 38 days. Across the Pilbara there are 11 vacant positions; a statewide relieving team has been sent to the district 10 times in the past year. Four extra practitioners were arriving in Port Hedland on 15 and 16 September, as Parliament sat.

Nyamal elder Linda Doogiebee-Dridi told the ABC on 14 September that the department's approach needed to be co-designed with the community. After the sentencing in 2023, a Nyamal elder the ABC reported as Linda Doogiebee had said that although "the Pilbara is the hub of the Australian economy", to that day "nobody has come up and offered a bag of sugar". Kariyarra elder Pat Mason's view, read into the Council record by Nationals MLC Julie Freeman, is sharper: "DCP haven't got their priorities right: stop removing the children from homes where there's sexual abuse and start removing the perpetrators instead."

Milpaku Kuma ("coming together"), the Town of Port Hedland's community centre, in 2023. Photo: Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0, resized.

What is still unanswered

• How many recommendations did the two reviews make, and how many have been implemented? Asked on 8 September; still unanswered. The minister says the new review will tell her.
• Will any of it be published? The internal review of July 2024, the Ombudsman's review, the terms of the new review and the new review itself. The government has committed to none.
• Will there be an inquest? The Attorney General has the power to direct one. Ms Papertalk and a federal MP have asked; a former Solicitor-General says the government is wrong to claim it cannot; Ms Papertalk's lawyer wants a national inquiry. The government has not said no, and has not said yes.
• Was anyone held accountable? The government's answer is that the failures were systemic, not individual.
• Is the office that handled the family able to do the job now? A third of its frontline positions are empty.

Ms Papertalk keeps a small fairy garden at her house in Frisby Court that she planted with the children. A plaster dog Jamelia painted red is flaking into the soil; Arnda's green dinosaur hangs from a vine. "I keep this garden for them," she told the magazine, "wishing they'll walk in the door one day."

Sources: "Stolen", Ros Thomas, The Australian Weekend Magazine, 22 August 2026; Hansard, Legislative Assembly, 9, 15 and 16 September 2026 (questions 530–531, 558, 564, 575–576 and 581–582, the Secret Harbour by-election debate of 9 September and the matter of public interest of 15 September) and Legislative Council, 8, 9 and 15 September 2026 (questions 766, 832, 836–837, 845, 848–849, 851 and 856–857, the motion on the Minister for Child Protection, and the members' statement of 15 September), uncorrected proofs; Coroners Act 1996 (WA), section 22; ABC News, 28 April, 5 May and 6 May 2023 and 14 September 2026; NCA NewsWire, 6 May 2023; National Indigenous Times, 26 August 2026; WA Ombudsman, child death review; Barnardos Australia, 8 October 2025; WA Government media statement, 19 March 2025; Legal Aid WA, on the appointment of Justice Lundberg, September 2022.