ON the wharf where South Australian man Damien Little drove into the water, killing himself and his two young boys, family and friends have laid flowers and even raised their glasses to toast a man and his children “gone too soon”.

And that has left Phil Cleary truly revolted.

“It’s disgusting,” the former federal Independent MP and sportsman turned-anti domestic violence campaigner told news.com.au.

“What we have is a man who has driven his car at high speeds off a wharf, terrifying the children, and left them to drown in the sea. It’s an horrendous, appalling, brutal, violent act. How can anyone go to that setting and put a wreath down and feel sympathy for the man who’s done that? Not only to the children but the mother of those children.”

Mr Cleary knows keenly what it is like to be left behind. In 1987, his sister Vicki was stabbed to death by a former boyfriend in a fit of jealous rage. He later used Victoria’s now-defunct provocation law to be found guilty of the lesser crime of manslaughter.

Mr Cleary doesn’t believe men who kill their children in murder-suicides should receive a shred of sympathy, and has taken aim at the media’s treatment of the Little incident.

Media coverage has touched on 34-year-old Little’s three-year spiral into depression before he drove his car off a Port Lincoln wharf at 80kmh on Monday with sons Koda, 4, and Hunter, nine months, strapped inside.

Since then, he has variously been described as a “top bloke”, “perfect father” and “devoted husband” in media coverage.

“He wanted to do everything right. He was very hard on himself. He wanted to live a perfect life,” his mother Sue Little was quoted as saying, including by news.com.au.

“Over the past three years he had a bit of a problem, we had noticed a change. When we saw [it] the whole family tried to help him. He had a lot of people offering help. We tried to help him, we all did. But you can’t help somebody who can’t help himself.”

Local football club President Brenton Dennis was reported as saying: “You couldn’t have asked for a better bloke.”

South Australian Commissioner for Victim’s Rights, Michael O’Connell, urged people not to rush to judgment.

“We do not know the reasons Damien did what he appears to have done and speculating helps neither the family nor the people of Port Lincoln,” he was quoted as saying.

Mr Cleary agreed the full picture was yet to emerge. But he drew comparisons with the killing of Rosie Batty’s son Luke by his father Greg Anderson in 2014 and questioned why the public had reacted with horror to that case, but not this one.

“Greg Anderson’s murder of Luke Batty was an act of revenge against the boy’s mother. I believe Rosie accepts that,” Mr Cleary, 63, said.

“One interesting thing about this is we don’t quite know if this is an act of revenge murder. Most children killings by men are revenge killings [for example] Robert Farquharson in Victoria and Darcey Freeman off the bridge.”

“What this man has done is in the same territory I think.”

A rifle was also found in Little’s car but police have not said what, if any, connection it has to the incident.

Among the tributes left between flowers, teddy bears and footballs were several handwritten cards.

“May their little souls rest in peace,” one read, while another said: “RIP little fellas 2 angels back in the loving arms of God. With deepest condolences to the family.”

Mr Cleary said the starting point in cases of family violence had to be “abject shock”.

“The Prime Minister said on White Ribbon Day we need cultural change. [Port Lincoln] is another example of how deep the disregard is for women [and] how high the sympathy for violent men is.”

He pointed to scenes played out in courtrooms around the country when men were put on trial for murdering their partners. The women’s personal lives become fair game for defence lawyers to try and find some way to explain why their client had killed, he said.

“It’s dominated by sympathy of them and condemnation [of] the women. Anyone who goes into courts comes to see it.

“I think we have a deeper problem around men’s violence in domestic settings. Maybe it confronts it so much we can’t condemn it outright because men think ‘there go I, but for the grace of God?”

Mr Cleary has been outspoken on other murder-suicides, including the case of Geoff Hunt who murdered his wife and three children before taking his own life in 2014.

“The logical extension of depression is not murder,” he said at the time. “It is still driven by a view of women and children as commodities to be controlled by a man. Even if a man makes a decision to kill his family because he thinks it is virtuous, it is a disgraceful act that we should condemn.”

Mr Cleary said the Little case brought back terrible memories of his own sister’s death.

“It was incomprehensible, it was painful, it was devastating. Then we had to go to court and saw a narrative where my sister was blamed for the act of violence from a man.

“Now nearly 29 years later I see a man drive his children into the sea in a terrifying act of murder, and clusters of men want to celebrate [him] as [a] decent, good man. Doesn’t that suggest we have a serious problem?”

Despite that, he remains hopeful the current debate about domestic violence in Australia will lead to change. “Because this is not how I believe good men behave.”

If you or someone you know needs help, please call Lifeline on 13 11 14.

andrew.koubaridis@news.com.au