Division and distrust
The Government insists it has strengthened the monitoring of its child protection agency. Almost no-one seems to agree, writes Michelle Duff.
In late 2018, Māori pēpi were being removed from their parents at greater rates than ever before and more than twice that of Pākehā. It was racist, heavyhanded intrusion from the state, tasked with keeping children safe but seemingly blind to its own policies tearing whānau apart.
Then-children’s Commissioner Judge Andrew Becroft was initially optimistic change was coming. A raft of laws coming into effect in 2019 meant the government had to monitor and report back on outcomes for Māori children.
It didn’t take long for him to change his tune. Rising Māori opposition to the practice, the Hawke’s Bay case, which revealed traumatising newborn uplift processes on video, coupled with revelations from the commission’s own reports and tamariki, led to graver analysis.
‘‘The enduring legacy of colonisation together with systemic racism is a pretty lethal cocktail, and it’s evident throughout all government departments,’’ Becroft told
Stuff and many others, continuing the tradition of his office and those who held it before him – Dr Russell Wills, Dr John Angus, Dr Cindy Kiro – to be a staunch and outspoken advocate for children.
Against this backdrop, and the announcement of a Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in State Care in early 2018, four separate inquiries were held into Oranga Tamariki’s care and protection practices by the Waitangi Tribunal, the Māori-led Whānau Ora Commissioning Agency, the Ombudsman and the children’s commissioner, along with an internal Oranga Tamariki review.
But Stuff can reveal that, even as this was happening, government officials were forging ahead on proposals to set up an ‘‘independent’’ monitor for Oranga Tamariki.
It would be within a government department, preferably, advice said, the Ministry of Social Development (formerly Child, Youth and Family). The children’s commissioner ought not to be involved, because it would be ‘‘coloured by its advocacy role on behalf of children’’.
Some of this initial thinking has since been tempered by strong protest. But analysis of this and other documents that informed a controversial bill passed last week paints a picture of a Government with a singular intent.
It meant to propose a law it knew would be widely unpopular, including with survivors of abuse in state care, and then forge ahead in the face of unanimous political opposition.
This includes stripping the Office of the Children’s Commissioner (OCC) of most of its powers and spreading them between a bolstered Ombudsman and a new Independent Children’s Monitor, to be established as a new departmental entity.
‘‘It’s Putinesque,’’ says Professor Jonathan Boston, chair of Victoria University’s School of Government.
‘‘It’s hard to read what’s happened in relation to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner without the sense that a powerful voice was inconvenient for the Government. That clearly led to an initiative to mute it.
‘‘If you respond negatively to criticism by a Crown entity and essentially mute that entity, that’s consistent with what Vladimir Putin would do. You hear criticism of yourself, you don’t like it, and you get rid of it. It is seriously concerning.’’
‘Coloured by advocacy’
In an aide-memoire from November 2018 entitled ‘‘Strengthening independent oversight of children’s system’’, the then-state Service Commission outlined its thinking to State Services Minister Chris Hipkins.
The best place for an independent monitor, it said, was within a government department, preferably the Ministry of Social Development. Or, to put it another way, the best entity to make sure the state was doing its job properly was the state.
The OCC had advocacy, monitoring and investigative functions. But there were risks with situating the monitor within it, the aidememoire said.
This included that ‘‘Its feedback, which may extend beyond what is required by current policy settings, would not be particularly helpful to Oranga Tamariki’’, and that ‘‘Oranga Tamariki and others may perceive its feedback as coloured by its advocacy role on behalf of children’’.
When Social Development and Employment Minister Carmel Sepuloni took a proposal to Cabinet in March 2019, it was agreed that the monitor be set up within MSD, with the ‘‘in-principle’’ decision made to move it across to the children’s commissioner.