What New Zealand should expect from a long overdue apology

On Tuesday 12 November,  Prime Minister Christopher Luxon will apologise in parliament to survivors of abuse in care. His speech will follow apologies from heads of ministries called out as offenders by the final report of the Abuse in Care Royal Commission.

The event will be live-streamed alongside simultaneous events hosted in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.

The Commission’s report states that these apologies are important and necessary measures of redress. The PM will be following the apologetic practice of comparative states such as Australia, Canada, Ireland, and the United States. And the apologies will fulfil a commitment he made when Parliament received the Royal Commission’s final report in July.

These apologies are much anticipated and long overdue. But this day is not only about the Government.Survivors will be part of the apology event. Many will crowd into Parliament’s banquet hall and gallery. Four survivors will speak in response to the heads of ministries’ apologies and before the PM’s speech, with their words supported by karakia from other survivors.

One of those speakers, Sir Robert Martin, died earlier this year and his contribution will be made by video, and serve as a tribute to his fiercely genial lifelong advocacy for survivors and for people with disabilities.

Participation by survivors means this event will be a dialogue, not a monologue. Whereas overseas politicians have sought to use apologies to ‘close the books’ on atrocity, the presence of living survivors speaking at Parliament will demonstrate that state wrongdoing is not past tense.

It is important that politicians and bureaucrats say “sorry” for what was done to survivors in the name of the state. But it is also important to hear survivors’ perspectives on the proceedings considering their often decades-long struggles with state institutions and faith-based organisations. Government officials will not unilaterally define the event.

I expect to hear different perspectives. The Government should expect criticism, not only of the failures so amply described by the Royal Commission but also of ongoing foot-dragging on other measures of redress.

Some survivors will reject some or all of the apologies. Other survivors may accept apologies on a conditional basis, conditional on delivery of adequate redress measures. I expect the four survivors who will speak before the PM, and the karakia, to challenge the Government to take serious action to meet the needs of survivors and people in care.

Expectations are high. The PM received plaudits for his response to the tabling of the Commission’s final report in Parliament when he told survivors that the burdens they bear as a result of abuse in care were no longer theirs to carry alone. New Zealanders can expect to hear him offer sincere words of regret. They can also hope to hear commitments to a better future.

In recent weeks, the responsible minister, Erica Stanford, has signalled that she will be tabling legislation aimed at improving the state care system. Improvements will be welcomed by the thousands of survivors who testified to help stop abuse in care.

However, real improvement requires legislative change to be matched with the resources needed. That requires more support for community services, not less. Yet the Government is cutting funding to community care agencies that support vulnerable people. Changing the law is one thing. Delivering quality services is another.

The Royal Commission’s recommendations are more ambitious than a quick legislative or funding fix. The Commission asks New Zealanders to understand the domain of care as a critical field for social investment. The horrors of under-investment, dysregulation, and simple prejudice fill the pages of the Royal Commission’s reports.

Truly transformative change is needed. The Royal Commission envisions a future where out-of-home care is an extraordinarily rare short-term emergency measure. Its final report is a road map to a society that does not have a ‘care system’, instead, whānau and communities get the support they need to care for those who need it where they need it, usually in their home. It remains to be seen if the PM will pick that taki.

Turning to monetary redress, I commend the Government for the measures that have been announced for some Lake Alice survivors: money for the critically ill and reimbursement of legal fees. But most survivors were not at Lake Alice. There is a danger that ‘redress for survivors of Lake Alice’ will displace redress for other survivors. That would be profoundly unfair.

The Royal Commission is clear that all survivors are entitled to redress, regardless of where they were in care and regardless of whether the care placements were run by state or faith-based organisations.

So far, the Government has been very quiet about the claims of survivors of faith-based care. A fair redress system must be inclusive. Moreover, a fair system must be independent, both structurally and financially, of both church and state. Otherwise, survivors confront glaring conflicts of interest as offending agencies decide how much they should pay their victims.

And finally, a fair system must have survivor-leadership. Survivors must be able to determine their own redress journeys.

The Government’s approach will be judged in comparison with measures taken overseas. Monetary values provide easy comparisons. The Royal Commission’s judgement on this matter is unsparing—the redress presently available in Aotearoa is ‘patently insufficient’. Average payments in comparative programmes overseas are four to five times higher than what survivors receive here.

Beyond financial redress, survivors will be watching what the Government says about other redress measures. Access to counselling is extremely difficult for many survivors who are at present engaged with processes at ACC and which are not fit for purpose.

Equally, survivors seeking records from their time in care now confront agencies scrambling through once-in-a-generation staffing cuts and when the Government has defunded the programme, digitalising their records. While the Government is working on a commendable initiative to map some of the records held by agencies in Aotearoa, that work is only funded for another nine months and is not equipped to help survivors access paper files held in thousands of archives around the country.

Aotearoa New Zealand will be watching the Government’s apologies carefully. They should hear some very fine words. As the PM told the nation in July, his words would ring “hollow without the recognition that comes with redress”.