We have national days to mark and remember significant bodies of people important to our identity and culture.

There are several notable days of remembrance: Remembrance Day on the 11th of November, ANZAC Day on the 25th of April, and Police Remembrance Day on the 29th of September. All of these institutions are rightly and properly observed.

But there is another group of people who should be remembered and acknowledged in a similar way; people who are usually overlooked by the criminal justice system, supposedly set up to protect them, and all of us.

These are the people who have been killed in the course of crimes, whether that be by (for example) deliberate murder, criminal assaults in their own home or on the street, or at the hands of hooligan divers who care nothing for the lives of others.

We should acknowledge these folk, and remember them – if only because any of us could be the next to become one of them.

At CAA we know of too many cases in which the courts and judicial system in general treat victims, and their survivors, usually their family, as inconveniences – to be tolerated but not respected as central to the issues facing those organisations.

We know only too well that victims of crimes, and their survivors, often become re-victimised by the system.

Could we not have one day set aside and marked to remember those whom society has failed to protect – a National Crimes Victims’ Remembrance Day?  A day that would spur us on to do better?