By David Cohen*
Opinion - The latest phase of the Abuse in Care inquiry has offered insight into the big four government agencies' role in historical abuse in state-operated residences.
Royal Commission Abuse in Care inquiry. Photo: RNZ / Patrice Allen
The country's education chief was moved last week to gently reprove one of the five commissioners at the Abuse in Care investigation. To understand why this was necessary is to understand the drift of the latest phase of the Royal Commission.
Secretary for Education Iona Holsted was among the 14 governmental agency heads summoned to Auckland to offer a bureaucratic view on the abuse that sometimes went on in state-run residential institutions during the last half of the 20th century.
"It's time now for Aotearoa New Zealand to hear from the organisations who were responsible," inquiry chairperson Coral Shaw declared in advance of the public hearings.
Unfortunately, the organisations primarily "responsible" for the historical carnage we have all heard so much about tended to have earthy names like Holdsworth, Kingslea and Kohitere, most of whose chiefs are either now dead, living in parts unknown or else not returning calls.
Yes, the 26 state-operated residences around New Zealand last century all had their departmental overlords who ran things with a decidedly light hand.
Chair Coral Shaw at the hearing of the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care inquiry. Photo: RNZ / Patrice Allen
But these men and women were always basically following political orders thereby responding to the clear wishes of most voters.
New Zealand is, after all, a deeply punitive culture.
Whether in terms of being one of the only countries in the world ever to reintroduce the death penalty for mostly young men (as it once did with alacrity), to the judicial practice a generation earlier of flogging youthful homosexuals, to the collective electoral fury witnessed 14 years ago when nine in every 10 voters said in a referendum that they supported the right of parents to thrash their kids, the desire to mete out the stiffest of punishments for the young and the restless has long been a national attribute.
In such a context, creating residential institutions for them was always a political no-brainer, and may yet be even again if they carry on ramming the storefronts continue too much longer.
Another complexity in trying to deal with this in the present-day is that most of the ministries and departments we currently see are markedly different to what they once were or else simply did not exist at all during the period under review.
The Ministry for Disability Issues, which we also heard from this past week, opened its doors for business only last winter.
And an entity such as the Ministry of Social Development, which once had a significant role state-care, has been peripheral since at least the establishment of Oranga Tamariki in 2017. MSD's only notable relevance in 2022 continues to be in the settlement of some historical claims, but this is something the commissioners heard a lot about during the redress hearings.
In all, only four agencies (police, corrections, health and education) were and still are full-fledged players in the narrative.
What, then, does one actually talk about with so many organisations with relatively little to say? It's not as if anyone involved would wish for proceedings to take on the appearance of well-remunerated public service chiefs, relying on talking points drafted by highly paid comms advisors, haggling over arcane points with handsomely salaried commissioners at the most expensive independent inquiry the country has ever had.
Part of the answer in recent days has been race relations, in particular what appears to be the commission's gradual shift from considering all claims of abuse to giving a special emphasis to a few demographic groups.
In its media briefing notes for the latest round, the commission speaks of attention being given to "priority groups", these being Māori, Pasifika and kids with disabilities.
These are all absolutely critical considerations of course. Yet it was a bit surprising to read the brief of evidence of Police Commissioner Andrew Coster, for example, half of which at least has to do with only these groups.
Police Commissioner Coster addresses the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care. Photo: Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care
An inquiry into abuse, after all, also turns on abuse in all its vicissitudes. In this sense at least, there are no "priority" groups, just blighted lives that the commission itself was established to clothe with some highly belated dignity.
This is where the education secretary came in, or perhaps rather tuned out, after a commissioner, Andrew Erueti wanted to know where the apolitical chief executive stood on the question of the "racist" Native Schools Act. But this legislation was passed more than 150 years ago - which is to say, nearly a century before the period with which the current inquiry is concerned.
Holsted said she didn't think such a line of inquiry "takes us anywhere".
Probably a fair few listeners agreed. She might just as well have been asked whether her ministry was misogynistic for not having promoted the academic instruction of girls before the 1877 Education Act.
Still, it has been useful to hear from everyone so far, and the big four government agencies in particular. But if we are to have any more of government outfits giving accounts of themselves, perhaps the royal commission's own media-shy chief executive, Helen Potiki, could also be persuaded to come along, too.
It's still something of an open question where this inquiry and her nearly 200-odd full-time equivalents are currently drifting.
*David Cohen is a Wellington journalist and the author of Little Criminals: The Story of a New Zealand Boys' Home. He supplies regular analyses for RNZ.