Have you forgotten Gloriavale already?
It’s been a few weeks since TV’s Escaping Utopia brought the terrible thing that is Gloriavale into our living rooms once again. Is the outcry and horror still there? What will keep Gloriavale in people’s minds? Sadly, it’s likely to be the next terrible and tragic story that’s in the news.
What should be happening is those who can stop the abuse and servitude ought to be getting on and doing just that, and the way to do it is quite simple – apply the law.
Under the last government a coordinated inter-departmental taskforce was set up. It was to follow established goals, procedures and reporting functions, and it was a new approach from the previous isolated taskforce where each department worked in a silo, separate from each other.
Despite the new approach, which was reviewed in December last year, nothing of substance happened, meaning the secretive, closeted and controlled life in Gloriavale continued much as it always had.
As we recently heard from the new Government, the inter-departmental collaborative approach has now been abandoned, and things have returned to an uncoordinated individual department type of set up which is akin to fiddling while Rome burns.
Both styles of operation have failed the people in Gloriavale, particularly the children. Those children, as stated by Chief Employment Court Judge Christina Inglis in her decision last July, have their fate determined at birth, especially the girls.
She said: “They were born into the community and imbued from birth with well-accepted norms as to their place in the community and the work they would be expected to do as they grew up.”
Despite saying they are making changes and welcoming them, the Gloriavale leadership has shown no evidence of meaningful change and continues to tell the bureaucrats what the bureaucrats want to hear.
That is the reality behind reports filed in numerous departments outlining progress made, good relationships established, policies written and cooperation forthcoming.
The reports are not false; that is what the bureaucrats see, want to see and Gloriavale orchestrates, while the bureaucrats are on site.
In fact, in March this year, coalition minister Brooke van Velden responded to questions in the House saying she did not believe added bureaucracy was necessary to ensure the safety of children within Gloriavale, because each minister responsible would be working within their own agencies on the issues.
However, once the bureaucrats are back in their offices, Gloriavale returns to its standard operating system, which includes limited education, no freedom of movement or expression, no career opportunities, no choice who their life partner is, no money. (Recently Gloriavale members started receiving some money in their bank accounts but they are expected to donate it back to the community, which they do.) It is a life of “no”.
And they know full well that if all the boxes the bureaucrats want ticked, are ticked, then everything is tickety-boo.
That is the failure of this bureaucratrun tick-box exercise which is predicated on the terribly flawed presumption that form filling will somehow fix the ills of Gloriavale. It hasn’t before and it won’t in the future.
Regime change is needed to make the many and varied rights that most of us take for granted available to the residents of Gloriavale. Such change is needed now; it should have happened a long time ago.
Real change won’t come from more bureaucrats filling in forms but from politicians bringing the rule of New Zealand law to bear on Gloriavale. Please don’t forget them.