In a well-coordinated and well-resourced child protection system, health staff, child protection workers and forensic specialists should already be collaborating to share information about children and families at risk of harm.

These teams should be responding to the warnings some parents give prior to committing these crimes, then deciding whether parents convicted of murdering their children should have subsequent offspring removed.

However, responses to high-risk pregnancy and high-risk infants across Australia could be described as haphazard, and legislation alone will not correct the problem.