It hasn’t been a good week for the human race.

On Thursday, July 17, Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine. 298 people died. 37 Australians.

On the same date, in Adelaide, the Premier was informed that a Government care worker had been arrested and charged with serious sexual abuse and exploitation of seven young state wards. The alleged victims are described as of “pre-school age”. Some were so young they had not yet learned to speak.

In the days since those events, the death toll in Gaza has continued to rise. Over two days this week, the UN estimated that one child was killed for every hour of the day.

It hasn’t been a good week for humanity.

Is it ever? MH17 was shot down over a warzone that has become the epicentre of a bloody imperial crisis. The Arab-Israeli conflict has raged almost without cessation since 1947.

Here in SA, this Government alone has commissioned the Layton review of child protection, the Mullighan inquiry into the abuse of state wards and the Debelle Royal Commission into the non-disclosure of serious abuse by a carer at a western suburbs school – and yet we are now told everything authorities assumed about protecting vulnerable children is in question.

I saw a tweet this week from a NewsCorp Australia reporter that read: “Just seen a photo of kids on board MH17. This is a hard, hard day’s work.”

Not to sound hysterical, because I know global conflicts are ongoing and pedophile cases are commonplace in our courts and the world has a great capacity for evil, but some weeks just feel like hard, hard work.

Jay Weatherill says if the abuse allegations are proven true, “an evil shadow has descended on our state”.

He says South Australians should be prepared for horrifying revelations as the matter proceeds through the courts. He says we should be prepared to learn of more victims.

Maybe the most cynical of politicians could exaggerate the shock and horror he conveyed, but this was no exaggeration. He was thoroughly shaken.

Through it all, the Government and Opposition struck the appropriate note, much as their counterparts in Federal Parliament have since the downing of MH17 (with the exception of Jacqui Lambie). This was not a week for politicking. That Steven Marshall recognised as much after more than a year scoring points over Labor’s child protection failings shows a growing political maturity. Or perhaps just a basic decency.

But the questions will come. They must.

The Premier lamented that everything we understand about “best practice” is under a cloud. But how much of the state’s child protection regime is considered genuine best practice and how much is a budget-driven compromise?

The Public Service Association and Family First say it’s a no-brainer that carers in overnight situations should not be left alone with children. The Minister isn’t so sure that demanding the presence of two or more adults establishes the appropriate psychological environment for vulnerable kids but, in any case, she concedes Families SA simply doesn’t have the staff to implement the reform.

There is the sense of a department and a government flailing, trying to find the right note to hit and the right way forward.

Yesterday, the Minister announced that the employment records of all her agency’s residential-care workers would be audited by independent psychologists; at the same time, the employment of 180 qualified early-childhood workers would be fast-tracked. Don’t these two measures seem inherently contradictory? All existing employees will be psychoanalysed with a metaphorical fine-toothed comb, but almost 200 more will be hired at the earliest convenience.

And what of fresh reports the alleged abuser was investigated for inappropriate behaviour with a young girl a year ago, only to be reinstated when the allegation could not be proven?

If correct, it hardly seems symptomatic of the “abundance of caution” that has become this Government’s new favourite mantra.

This is, of course, the same “abundance of caution” that saw 30 residents in Clovelly Park told to evacuate their homes because of toxic soil and groundwater contamination. Despite the general shell-shocked aura of bipartisanship this week, the Opposition wasn’t about to give up on that one. Yesterday’s successful Upper House no-confidence motion in Ian Hunter (now universally known as “the embattled Environment Minister”) puts him in the exulted company of Russell Wortley, the only other Minister to come off worse for wear in a Legislative Council confidence vote this century.

This time last week, after a fortnight of frequently-self-generated bad publicity, Jay Weatherill had had enough. He called a media conference and, flanked by a chastened Hunter and EPA chair Mia Handshin (who had till then largely eschewed media requests), apologised for the Government’s handling of the situation.

It was a canny move. Eat the proverbial sandwich, wash your mouth out and move on.

It also happened to coincide with the first full day since the MH17 disaster, and was therefore buried deep in the news cycle.

Surely this was a mere coincidence? Surely he couldn’t be that cynical? Even though only one day earlier, in Budget Estimates, he brushed off questions about the contamination scare by referring them to the Embattled Environment Minister™. Why didn’t he apologise then? Because, according to the Premier, it wasn’t till the next morning that he had his epiphany about how badly everything had been dealt with, at which point he rallied the troops and herded the media together for his mea culpa.

A cynic might be reminded of Jo Moore, the Blair Government spin doctor who once came to grief when it emerged her response to the 9/11 tragedy was to issue an email edict: “It’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.”

For his part, Weatherill greeted any such suggestion with a sigh, and the pitying reflection that such an allegation betrayed a deep level of cynicism.

Maybe so, and none of us would be that cynical. Would we?

But the news wasn’t bad for everyone this week; there was one big winner. Fledgling Social Housing Minister Zoe Bettison has somehow managed to avoid the media limelight ever since admitting in parliament early this month that she had been aware Housing Trust tenants would be removed from their homes three weeks before they were eventually informed. On Wednesday, she finally fronted her appointed Estimates Committee; however, in the context of the devastating alleged crimes of the Families SA carer, her first public foray in almost a month to face a grilling on who knew what and when regarding the contamination scare played to an almost empty gallery.

Ironically, it was Bettison’s answer to a different question on a different portfolio that was far more pertinent. Asked about the viability of Government screening tests to detect “monsters in our midst”, Bettison explained that “while we have a very robust screening unit, it is a risk assessment. It is based on actions of people in the past … Obviously, we cannot predict the actions that a person will perform tomorrow.”

That reality is the tragedy of this week, a truly bad week for the world we live in. Some weeks it’s hard not to be a cynic.

Tom Richardson is InDaily’s political commentator and Channel Nine’s state political reporter.