A 39 year old man had set himself on fire outside of Brisbane’s Supreme Court complex yesterday, after a devastating and heart-breaking family court decision, according to witnesses at the scene.

The incident happened after the man had been sitting in front of the marble Law Courts sign for some time, in a distressed state after the outcome of his family court matter earlier in the day.

Disturbingly, no support was made available to the man despite his state of mind, as he lingered in a state of turmoil on his own.

Witnesses reported hearing a bang and seeing flames as would-be rescuers eventually ran to the man’s aid.

When emergency workers reached the man he was in a critical condition – with burns to 90 per cent of his body.

Two witnesses, Kylie Pannel and Kylie Beard, who were both close to tears, said they could not believe what happened just 3 metres from them.

“He said absolutely nothing, Ms Pannel said. “He was so quiet it wasn’t funny.”

The incident caused inner-city traffic chaos for more than 90 minutes as up to 15 emergency vehicles crowded into George St to get near the scene.

Paramedics stabilised the man before taking him to the Royal Brisbane Hospital. The man was in a critical condition with burns to 90 per cent of his body. He has since died overnight.

Norman Heffernon, Health care worker and volunteer single fathers’ support mentor, has called this incident another disgraceful display of the disregard that Australia has for its young men, often leaving them to deal with life’s catastrophies completely on their own, and stigmatising any men that dare to ask for help. Heffernon claims that the hypocrisy of the current Rudd government is that it has been lavishing funding to extensive preventative campaigns, while limiting the programmes almost exclusely to women and women’s issues.

Heffernon claims that Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon, a longtime misandrist with vocal sexist ideologies against men, needs to accept that the Federal government should be doing more to prevent so many of our young men committing suicide. “With Australia experiencing gender genocide unparalelled in our history” he says, “we need real genuine leadership in mens health and a parity in health spending in order to reverse this alarming but often ignored tragedy.”