Solicitor-General Una Jagose Photo: RNZ / Alexander Robertson
A deep dive into the massive Royal Commission report into Abuse in Care reveals a host of roles and names of those who stonewalled victims' compensation claims, but one stands out.
They don't speak with one voice.
But the Abuse in Care survivors - those whose cases have been trawled though by the Royal Commission of Inquiry - are after the head of Solicitor-General Una Jagose.
"They want her to go," says Laura Walters, political editor of Newsroom.
"Lots of different people have different ideas about how things should go, how things should change.
"Some people also just don't have the energy or the resources to speak up or to fight this, but people I've spoken to, whose cases have been very key in all of this; whose cases were highlighted in case studies and in the findings of the Royal Commission; they want her to go.
"They say that anyone who was involved with their cases shouldn't be leading this work going forward.
"But they expressly point out the Solicitor-General. They say that she was leading this, she was at the front of it, she was responsible, and they can have no confidence in what the government does from here on out while she is still in that position."
As the government's chief legal advisor, Jagose has been responsible since her appointment in 2016 for heading the Crown's response to survivors' legal claims.
But the massive, 16-volume doorstopper of a report from the Royal Commission spells out clearly that the moves of Crown Law and the Solicitor-General's office taken over the years to stop victims' claims going ahead were wrong.
Trying to stop those claims has cost millions - an RNZ report says at least $3.5 million over a decade.
On The Detail today, Walters and Newsroom co-editor Tim Murphy explain why the website has been running a string of stories about what was in the Royal Commission's report, and who it picks out when it comes to the decades of stonewalling of victims' complaints.
"Its focus, if you like, was vast and wide on many people in many positions and many agencies," says Murphy.
"There were elements throughout on [Jagose] but her particular role draws it back and almost exposes itself. Many other people in there were political, there were junior officials and other things but this is the second law officer of the land; this is the agency that should be held to the highest standards in the way it litigates and takes cases. So when you see that all lined up in flashing lights in a huge Royal Commission report, that fact that... justice wasn't done by that person, those people, those roles and that agency stands out."
Walters says the fact that Jagose is still there, and still has so much control and power, will influence directly how the government responds to the report.
Jagose was a lawyer at Crown Law and worked directly on some of these cases at the time.
The Royal Commission report revealed emails sent at that time talking about the fact that the mental pressure on survivors might see them give up on their legal battles.
Other tactics included delaying cases until the statute of limitations swung in; setting private investigators onto the families of victims; withholding documents from police that would have helped victims progress their claims; and intimidation.
"These are internal government emails that perhaps she thought might never see the light of day, but they have now."
Had the cases succeeded at the time, some of them would have set massive precedents and cost the Crown enormous amounts of money - perhaps billions. They would also have resulted in political embarrassment.
The Solicitor-General's role is to act as a model litigant on behalf of the people of New Zealand. On the podcast today we ask if that means saving the taxpayer money, or seeking justice on behalf of a group of New Zealanders let down by the state.
"There were a lot of civil cases where these abuse survivors faced absolutely horrific stuff and so you start going, 'well how much should you pay someone who faced a lifetime of that?' So these are potentially big figures. You could open the floodgates," says Walters.
"You can see that the Crown, and Crown Law, and people like the Solicitor-General and the lawyers there, threw everything at this. It looked like a win-by-any-means situation."
The government is due to give victims of abuse an apology on 12 November.
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