Trust In Me
Kids in boot camps will be just fine, it'll be different this time.
Trust in me in all you do
Have the faith I have in you
Love will see us through, if only you trust in me
Why don't you, you trust me?
In a week that saw the release of the 3,000 page Abuse in Care report Christopher Luxon was being asked about Boot Camps. It’s not a good look is it?
This from the BBC:
“Some 200,000 children, young people and vulnerable adults suffered abuse while in state and faith-based care in New Zealand over the last 70 years, a landmark investigation has found.
It means almost one in three children in care from 1950 to 2019 suffered some form of abuse, including being subject to rape, electric shocks and forced labour, according to the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry.”
At a time of tremendous sorrow over the abuse that occurred in state care our Prime Minister wants to again send kids to military style punishment facilities - even though he knows the policy is a failure.
This abuse wasn’t the state, and these religious institutions, getting it a bit wrong, being a bit rough, and trying outdated practices. What occurred was the wholesale degradation, torture, and rape of thousands and thousands of kiwis whose lives were damaged, many beyond repair. Every New Zealander should look at these shameful acts and scream - never again!
But don’t worry, said Luxon, his care of troubled young people is "very, very different". Whew - well that’s alright then. I mean we take this guy at his word, right?
Probably not eh?
The following section is from an article in the Spinoff by Joel MacManus - The shadow of a boot camp hangs over parliament.
A 110-page section of the report is dedicated to a case study of Te Whakapakari, a boot camp on Aotea, Great Barrier Island, where young offenders were subjected to extreme psychological, physical and sexual abuse – including being made to dig their own graves while being held at gunpoint.
It’s an uncomfortable parallel for a government which just four days prior had launched its pilot of a military-style academy for young offenders at Te Au rere a te Tonga Youth Justice residence in Palmerston North. Some survivors think it is effectively impossible to run this kind of boot camp without relying on abusive tactics to scare young offenders and keep them in line.
Luxon says it’ll be different, this time.
There will be protections and safeguards. Which might be vaguely reassuring if this wasn’t the government of watering down and cancelling rules and regulations left, right, and centre.
Got some pesky red tape around protected species? Excessive overheads having to follow health and safety regulations? Well, who you gonna call?
Unfortunately for the Prime Minister he should have called the Minister for Children, who seemed to have missed the memo that it was all going to be hunky dory.
Minister Chhour was asked on RNZ if she could guarantee that young people in boot camps would not be at risk of abuse. She said she couldn’t. How’s that for ministerial responsibility? The Minister for Children says she can’t guarantee that young people her government are putting into state care facilities won’t be abused.
Well maybe we shouldn’t be doing it then Karen?
Chhour said, “What I can guarantee is that it will be open, transparent, with the ability of Mana Mokopuna, the ability of the Ombudsman, the ability of the Independent Children's Monitor to show up at any time with no notice to make sure that these young people are safe, and I encourage them to do that as much as they feel necessary.”
Naw - isn’t that reassuring?
I don’t trust these guys one bit that when push comes to shove, and they need more spending cuts, that safeguards around troubled youths in boot camps won’t be one of the first things on the chopping block.
You can just see it from ACT, and their proxies at Tax-avoiders United and NZME. Complaining about how good the bad guys have it, how they should be on bread and water and left to look after their own safety. You can’t make an omelette and all that.
Christopher Luxon addressed survivors of the abuse who were in the house as the report was presented. “I cannot take away your pain, but I can tell you this: You are heard and you are believed”. Soothing words from the Prime Minister, but actually utter hypocrisy. If he was so opposed to what has happened, so sorry and willing to listen, then he has a funny way of showing it by launching boot camps
Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer, said “The fact that those who targeted our people – because they were Māori. They were Takatāpui, they were Tāngata Whaikaha, they were Tangata Turi and they were poor – that’s why we were targeted. What the hell has changed?
We should be working with the lived experiences and learn from it – otherwise all of this is just lip service.”
If there is anything to be proud of in any of this it is that the former Labour government undertook this inquiry to honestly look at what happened. That my friends is what a government that cares about all it’s people looks like.
Hipkins said, “I want to acknowledge the thousands of survivors, those who’ve given their time, energy and stories to the inquiry, and those who have died before this report was able to be finalised.
There will never be closure for some, but I hope that today offers some relief for survivors – that their fight to be heard has resulted in a formal apology and redress.”
Green Party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick said, “At one point or another we must look in the mirror, away from the heat of knee-jerk political campaigns. And the basic question for this House is whether we are serious about transformational change to stop harm at the hand of the state.
If we are, we need to reconcile that this abuse and the consequences of this abuse are not historic. That abuse and harm cannot be siloed. It is built into the fabric of the way that our state has worked since colonisation in this country established this Parliament.
That should not be a controversial statement. We can own our history and we can do better. The buck stops here. We either do something or we don't. We either tinker or we transform.”
It’s actually mind blowing that any government, even this government, could be so oblivious to what has happened that they would willingly risk the same mistakes again. Ignoring history, and ignoring the evidence. It’d be like having a report saying that smoking was bad for you but having the coalition say switch to vapes and heated tobacco, she’ll be right.
I should add that we’re not just talking about those who will be put into boot camps. As you’re no doubt aware that is just the tip of the iceberg when we talk about those in state care.
When children need to be taken into care for safety it must be done, I’m not going to argue that there isn’t a need for it. But if we are taking children out of violent situations then we need to do better at making sure they are safe, nurtured, and loved. Too often it seems we are taking vulnerable kids from one unsafe place to another. That their protectors become their tormentors.
Our country must never be a place where we allow this sort of vileness, this torture and rape of children, to ever happen again. It’s not bloody good enough that we have the Prime Minister saying it’ll all be ok this time. Even as survivors of the abuse cry out for there to be no more boot camps.
Those whose lives have been damaged through trauma, followed no doubt for many by years of drug and alcohol abuse to numb the pain.
Those who have gone cry out too. The ones who could not stand to continue to live in a world that treated them in ways beyond comprehension. The way they were treated by our state and institutions that were supposed to care for them and keep them safe.
Fuck you Christopher Luxon - how dare you increase the possibility of this happening again in our country?
But then they’re not your kids are they? Or those of the people that vote for you. They are the broken and damaged, those expendable and better out of the sight of decent folks. People that don’t even cross your mind when you lie in bed at night, I’m sure.
Meanwhile the ghouls in charge see the idea of boot camps getting positive numbers from focus groups so they roll them out to appease the mob and appeal to voters. A mob that they themselves have worked into a frenzy through their scare mongering. And the smiley leader says don’t worry, trust in me, it’ll all be fine. It’ll all be different.
This time.
Everything this CoC do is designed to divide. The most destructive government I’ve witnessed in my 65 years of living in Aotearoa. Shame on everyone that supports them.
All the words from this government which actually doesn’t give a damn. Yesterday in Nine to Noon, we heard about some 400 social service community organisations who work with the children and whanau so much at the heart of the report who are in funding limbo, their contracts having expired at the end of June. As of yesterday, most had no idea of what the future holds. No one in OT was giving them answers, funding managers etc having been made redundant or MIA. They don’t know if they are casualties of the government’s spending cuts or a philosophical divide or something else. Just a shambles, caused by the chaos this government’s war on the public service and its populist policies. At the heart of their slashing, there are real people and services, not faceless bureaucrats who they pretend are sitting around doing nothing.