Between 1950 and 1993 the New Zealand government tortured and abused up to 250,000 children in residential care facilities. Yesterday, following formal findings from a royal commission, it finally apologised for that abuse. The next step is redress and restitution - compensating the surviving victims for the appalling harm they have suffered. But it turns out that maybe not every victim is going to get compensated, with the government refusing to say if it plans to exclude gang members:
Asked on Wednesday whether gang members would be eligible for redress, the relevant minister, Erica Stanford, declined to say.So, they're considering it (and the fact that she refuses to say and hides behind cabinet confidentiality tells us that). So the position of at least some parties in this government is that the government can torture and abuse people, ruin their lives, and that if it decides it doesn't like you, they can refuse to compensate you. That is unjust. it is indecent. And it makes a total mockery of yesterday's "apology"."I have not made any decisions and neither has Cabinet. All of these things have to go to Cabinet," Stanford said.
"I'm not going to tell you today what's in and what's out and how much, because we haven't made any of those decisions yet."
Pressed again, Stanford said the question of whether gang members would be eligible was "one of the things that we have to be looking at".
As the royal commission found, "Gangs provided survivors with the care (that is, attachment and belonging) and protection that state and faith-based institutions should have given." If abuse victims turned to gangs as a response to abuse, that seems to be the government's fault; and maybe it neds to think about compensating those institutions for the care they gave, and that the government did not.
