A royal commission should be set up to expose incidents of children at risk following a house fire on the Central Coast that left four children dead, says the Diocese of Sydney's Director of Professional Standards, Philip Gerber.
Mr Gerber says Australians need to take stock of how society lets such tragedies happen to children and whether the support mechanisms for single mothers are adequate.
Mr Gerber said the Wyong tragedy, which happened in the early hours of Thursday morning on June 9, should be seen as child abuse.
"Why shouldn't we all take responsibility for the fact that those kids burnt to death?" Mr Gerber says.
"You can't just blame the mother as a welfare bludger."
Lisa Ford, a mother of eight, was out with friends when the fire started, apparently from a blanket falling on a heater.
Her three sons " Jethro David Sparks, seven, George Troy Leslie Gillett, two and Harley James Garrison Wells, 15 months died along with a friend Madison Hands, six.
Police have not laid charges.
The incident followed a house fire in Coonamble in Western NSW on June 5 when Tony Conn, 56 and his wife, Belinda, 35 were killed when they tried to rescue their son Will, four, from their burning property.
The spate of deaths means every home in NSW must be fitted with a smoke alarm by law from May 2006.
Child sex abuse "only part of the picture'
Mr Gerber says the media's focus on child abuse in the Church is disproportionate to the number of children at risk across Australia, and more should be done to expose such failings.
"Sexual abuse is terrible but the reality is abuse that happens in institutions is really a tiny part of the abuse that happens to children. It's less than five per cent," Mr Gerber says.
"We want to get rid of it in the Church but an investigation needs to be much wider than that to be meaningful."
He welcomed calls from lobbyists for a royal commission into allegations that a paedophile ring operated in the Australian Anglican Church in the 1980s.
In May former Tasmanian priest Louis Victor Daniels was found guilty of the abuse of 10 children.
Mr Gerber says he has seen no evidence of a network and no one in the Church is currently assigned to an investigation.
Mr Gerber been appointed to the Anglican Church of Australia's Professional Standards Commission and recently became Director of Professional Standards for the Dioceses of Newcastle, Armidale and Grafton.
He said more stringent measures against sex abuse by clergy and church workers has resulted in a decision to send all incoming students to Moore Theological College to Child Protection training.
Meanwhile a group of selected individuals in the Sydney Diocese will be trained to help parishes handle sex abuse allegations.
Advisory procedures are also being developed to deal with known sex offenders within congregations.
"They are significant steps and recognise that we want people to have competency in those areas," Mr Gerber says, adding that the moves "stemmed from a number of incidents over the years’.
Stricter measures to combat sexual abuse and misconduct in churches were passed at the General Synod in Fremantle last year including a national register of clergy and church workers.
