Almost as soon as the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care was convened in 2018, rumours began circulating about former politicians implicated in the abuse of children. In its final report, the inquiry confirmed that it “received allegations about organised child sexual abuse or a ‘paedophile ring’ by former central government politicians in social welfare settings”.
The allegations included, “The transportation of children and young people from social welfare residences and institutions and other state care residences and institutions in the Horowhenua area to private locations in the Horowhenua and Te Whanganui-ā-Tara Wellington regions. It is alleged at the private locations they were sexually abused by former central government politicians and prominent public servants … Groups of men being brought into the Kimberley Centre [a psychopaedic hospital near Levin] to sexually abuse non-speaking girls in care” and “abuse of young people in care working as underage sex workers in Te Whanganui-ā-Tara Wellington and Ōtepoti Dunedin by prominent public servants”.
It concluded, “None of the allegations of organised group abuse in state care settings described above were able to be substantiated by direct evidence.”
Two months after the publication of the report, former National MP “Aussie” Malcolm – a minister of health and immigration in the Muldoon government – died after a short illness at the age of 83. Shortly afterwards, police revealed he had been under investigation for the sexual abuse of children as a result of allegations raised by the abuse in care inquiry, and that three previous complaints had been made – two in 1992 and another in 2012 – but the guidelines for prosecution had not been met.
The royal commission looked at historical abuse but the investigative scope was limited to 1950-99. This was a pragmatic compromise.
To examine more recent claims would have resulted in stonewalling and furious legal resistance from the agencies and individuals under investigation. But it was able to expose the elaborate cover-up that state agencies conducted over several decades to conceal those crimes.
The commission concluded, “Political and public service leaders spent time, energy and taxpayer resources to hide, cover up and then legally fight survivors to protect the potential perceived costs to the crown, and their own reputations.”
An ordinary person
In 1963, the political theorist Hannah Arendt published a series of articles in the New Yorker about the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann. One of the key logistical organisers of the Holocaust, Eichmann fled to Argentina after the war. Israel’s intelligence agents hunted him down and smuggled him back to Jerusalem.
Arendt’s diagnosis of Eichmann is controversial. She concluded that he wasn’t a Nazi in any ideological sense, or a sadist, or a psychopath. He facilitated the mass murder of millions of people because he thought it would make his superiors in the SS happy and thus advance his career. He was hard-working, diligent, a member of the intellectual class, but he lacked the capacity to think for himself.
Government can empower monsters, who find willing hosts of intelligent yet unthinking administrators eager to court their favour.
The bureaucratic nature of the system – the breakdown of the work into small, technical tasks, the abstract administrative language, the adherence to authority and total absence of moral accountability – made it possible for ordinary people to facilitate horrific crimes.
Waiting on redress
On November 12, the government, the Labour Party and representatives of public sector agencies apologised to the survivors of abuse. They are still working on a redress system but because of the scale of the state’s crimes, proper financial compensation is completely unaffordable. The commission has said that the average lifetime cost to the survivor of the loss of enjoyment of things that New Zealanders consider are normal day-to-day activities is estimated to be approximately $857,000. “Based on the estimated number of people abused and neglected in care between 1950 and 2019, the total cost is estimated to be between $96 billion and $217b.”
To put that into perspective, in 2024, expenditure for the entire government was $180b. The commission has handed down 138 recommendations. Some of them are unspeakably grim (establish an independent advisory group to investigate potential unmarked graves and urupā at the sites of former psychiatric and psychopaedic hospitals, social welfare institutions or other relevant sites). Some will likely meet resistance from officials, like the proposal that the crown be made financially liable for abuse of children in its care. Others will be more welcome, such as the establishment of a new Care Safe Agency.
The state’s preferred response to state failure is always the expansion of the state. But there has been no real accountability, and without that, there is no incentive for public sector agencies to change their behaviour.
The Solicitor-General, Una Jagose – one of the key architects of the cover-up – retains her job. She has become a focus of criticism because of the extremely aggressive legal tactics she adopted at the Crown Law Office. Most gravely, she kept from the police evidence relating to the Lake Alice crimes.
Survivors also demand the closure of Oranga Tamariki.
There is one small thing the government could do to show some contrition. It has announced its intention to remove honours from “proven perpetrators”, but it could also deem that the ministers and senior officials of the agencies found complicit in the cover-up be stripped of their honours and titles. No more honourables, right honourables, knighthoods, dames, KCs or orders of merit.
This wouldn’t cost anything, it could not be legally challenged, and the notion that politicians and officials might be held accountable for such horrific failures – even in this trivial and symbolic manner – would send seismic shockwaves through the ranks of our good and great.
Of course, it will never happen, and Oranga Tamariki – the government’s most perpetually broken agency – will endure.
Arendt knew that empowering the state to solve all your problems can be a Faustian bargain. Government can overcome obstacles that cannot be addressed by communities or markets – but it can also empower monsters, who find willing hosts of intelligent yet unthinking administrators eager to court their favour by amplifying and concealing their crimes.
