Joel MacManus reports from parliament as the prime minister delivers the national apology for abuse in state care, while Lyric Waiwiri-Smith in Auckland and Alex Casey in Christchurch join survivors watching the livestream.

‘It’s not enough’ – Wellington

As Andrew Bridgman, the acting chief executive of Oranga Tamariki, began the speeches at the national apology for abuse in state care, several survivors pulled out their phones to record the start of the historic occasion. “We put you in places and called them homes, but they were the furthest thing from a home a place could be. We are sorry for failing to give you a safe place to grow up,” he said. Two women in the crowd turned to each other and high-fived, to celebrate the moment that had eluded them for so long. 

Bridgman was the best public speaker of the day. He spoke in a deep voice with an emotive tone and dramatic pauses. When he concluded, only one person applauded. Someone shouted, “Shut down the boot camps.” It only got more combative from there. 

New Zealand’s director-general of health Diana Sarfati rushed through her speech nervously. “I offer you my deepest apologies,” she said. “It’s not enough,” came the response. “No apology can change the past or make up for the trauma you have faced,” she said. “Damn straight.” The murmurs from the crowd grew so loud they drowned out her speech. “Get a real job.”

Andy Jackson, acting secretary for education, was shouted down with calls of “boot camps don’t work”. Debbie Power, chief executive of the Ministry of Social Development, apologised for the way survivors have been treated in the redress process. “Still being treated.” She apologised for being too slow to take action. “Still too bloody slow.” 

Solicitor-general Una Jagose received the worst blowback. Several survivors have called for her to step down due to her personal involvement in the long-running efforts to cover up the abuse and torture they suffered. 

A man in the third row stood up and faced away from her as she spoke. “I’m here today to say I’m sorry,” she began her speech. 

“No, you’re not.”

“Fucking liar.”

“Resign.”

“Bastards.” 

“Fuck your process.”

“Sometimes, we made unfair judgements,” Jagose said. “You fucking think?” A woman left the room, shaking and crying. Several people in the crowd stood up, yelling and gesturing at Jagose until she stopped speaking and weakly ended her speech. The chorus of jeers followed her to her seat. 

“Get off.”

“Yeah, get off, you’re not worth it.”

“We care about you as much as you cared about us: zero.”

“Did that go as well as you expected?”

Gary Williams, a survivor with cerebral palsy, spoke on stage to cheers of “Go Gazza”. He introduced a video of the recently deceased survivor and activist Sir Robert Martin. Martin spoke about how hard he worked to build a life after leaving state care. “I didn’t know what a life was made up of,” he said. He asked the government to hold a citizenship ceremony for survivors who had been institutionalised and cut off from New Zealand society. As the video ended, he received a standing ovation. 

It’s a strange experience being a journalist at events like this. There’s a deeply emotional, personal thing happening and you’re meant to stand at the back and coldly record the events. I cried. 

Survivor Keith Wiffin applauded prime minister Christopher Luxon for his speech at the tabling of the royal commission report in July. “You gave hope that redress would be delivered. It is time to deliver.” Tu Chapman called out the prime minister for not attending the ceremony; he had left after the opening to prepare his remarks in parliament. “You owe us, right now. We are done with you wasting our time,” she said. “Put your money where your mouth is.”

As the crowd moved from the banquet hall to the parliamentary debating chamber where the prime minister and leader of the opposition would make their apologies, I spoke to Keith Wiffin about his speech. He told me he felt uncomfortable being in the same room as Una Jagose. I asked if he accepted the state’s apology. He said there hadn’t been one yet. He won’t accept words, he wants action. 

In the house, Luxon’s speech was interrupted almost immediately by Karl Mokaraka, who stood up in the gallery with a printed speech. He identified himself as a survivor, then called for the government to “put Jesus Christ back in this parliament”. He was dragged off by security, yelling, “Make New Zealand great again.”

The rest of Luxon’s speech was uneventful. There were no major interruptions. It wasn’t as powerful as the one he gave at the tabling in June. Partly that was because of the heckler, but there was also something different in his tone and body language. Last time, there was a sense of pride, you could tell he felt the mana of his role as prime minister answering the duty of history. This time, he was reading a script. He said the right words but without as much impact. 

Aaron Smale, the investigative journalist who spent years uncovering the state’s abuse and was briefly barred from attending the apology, was greeted like a returning hero by the other press gallery reporters. Speaker Gerry Brownlee required him to be chaperoned the whole time by Newsroom journalist Fox Meyer.

In a press conference after the speeches in parliament, Smale challenged Luxon on whether it was appropriate for Una Jagose to be in her job as solicitor-general. “She has apologised,” Luxon said. “I know survivors, and they don’t accept her apology,” Smale replied. Luxon said the state had failed survivors in the past, but denied that his government was continuing to fail. “We take this very seriously. We have from day one,” he said. “Is it just me, or is that a non-answer?” Smale muttered, loud enough for everyone to hear. 

Erica Stanford, minister in charge of the government’s response to the inquiry, was asked how she thought the day had gone. “I think it went as well as it possibly could have,” she said. 

The final line of questioning was about the cost of redress. In his speech, opposition leader Chris Hipkins had said Labour would commit to financial redress, no matter the cost. “We are taking the politics off the table… There will be a big bill, but it’s nothing compared to the debt we owe to those survivors.” Luxon wouldn’t make the same commitment. He emphasised that no amount of money would ever be enough to make up for the harm. 

Rapid payments for abuse victims are currently capped at $30,000. In announcing $32 million extra funding for the existing compensation system while a new redress system is worked on,  Luxon couldn’t confirm whether the current cap would change, or whether survivors would be eligible for future payouts if they had already accepted previous compensation. Jenna Lynch of ThreeNews asked if he thought $30,000 was a fair payment for the abuse they had suffered. He waffled again, saying he couldn’t confirm details. 

“But do you think it’s fair?” she asked again. 

“OK, thank you very much guys. Enjoy the day, thank you,” Luxon said, leaving the room in a hurry. 

– Joel MacManus

‘I’m here for the voices that still haven’t been heard’ – Auckland

In Auckland, memories of New Zealand’s decades-long abuse in state and religious care loom in many places. There’s Dilworth School in Epsom, St Dominic’s Catholic College in Henderson, and the hellholes demolished, like Ōwairaka Boys’ Home and Homai College. At Manukau’s Due Drop Centre, at least some of these victims finally heard the apologies that should have been afforded to them years ago.

The people here today represented New Zealanders of all stripes: clean cut and tattooed, old and young, working class and politicians, male and female, Pākehā and tangata whenua. They cried openly and freely, in quiet corners and out loud, alone or with a hand stroking their back. Wellbeing officers were placed around the building, in case you needed someone to talk to.

The apologies themselves received mixed reactions. Oranga Tamariki’s acting chief executive Andrew Bridgman has much of the crowd in tears as he apologised for the childhoods stolen. There were heads shaking at the words of the Ministry of Education’s acting chief executive Andy Jackson, and anti-brutality rebuttals to interim police commissioner Tania Kura.

Solicitor-general Una Jagose, understandably, caught the brunt of it: though the heckling was sometimes inaudible over the livestream, a defiant “no you’re not” to Jagose’s “sorry” sent a ripple of bitter laughter through the seats. Then, it was time for the survivors to speak, but as Tu Chapman put it, how do you detail a lifetime of abuse in a single five-minute speech? How do you respond to an apology you haven’t heard?

There were a number of empty seats in the arena, but perhaps not left vacant for lack of caring. There were seats that will never be filled, due to the survivors who still haven’t found a voice, and others who died before theirs could be heard, whether in or after a life spent in care, such as Sir Robert Martin, whose posthumous hopes were shared in a video following the apologies.

Or perhaps those seats belonged to the women that Adam, a survivor of Auckland’s The Glade, was looking for. He carried a photo of himself as a young lad with blond hair surrounded by older teenage girls, who he said acted as his protectors during his 24 months in the facility. The young boy in the photo flashes a smile, but Adam said he experienced abuse there that has followed him for a lifetime.

Adam grew up in New Plymouth, with an alcoholic father and a bipolar mother. At 12 years old, the state placed him in the facility where he says he was forcefully tattooed, and dealt physical and sexual assault by other male residents that left him wounded. There were four staffers to the 30 residents at The Glade, Adam says, and they participated in the assaults while encouraging a violent culture among the residents.

Adam wondered if he’d ever find the four other girls in the photo with him – they weren’t at the apology, and he hasn’t met anyone else who survived The Glade. Life after care has been up and down, with Adam losing his beloved job as an underwater welder years ago after a parasomnia diagnosis made him a “medical liability”. It wakes him up in the middle of the night sick and shaken with memories, a disorder a doctor has directly linked to his time in care. Adam said his youngest sons are afraid to come near his room in the night, for fear that a “monster” lives in there.

“I’m here for the voices that still haven’t been heard,” he said. It’s not about the apology, but finally being in a room with people who have the same lived experiences, and the possibility of finding someone who survived the same place as you. Adam never received an invitation to be at this event, though – he showed up after hearing about it on the radio.

He’ll go back home to Taranaki tomorrow, where he and his family live along the Forgotten Highway, and will still carry the scars on his wrist and the tattoo on his back no matter how many times the prime minister says sorry. He will still look for the other survivors who had to act as his protectors. His memories will still wake him up in the middle of the night. His sons will continue to fear the unseen monster that comes out in the dark.

– Lyric Waiwiri-Smith

‘We’re still in a state of confusion’ – Christchurch

The whole room felt like it was aching. Under the brutalist beams and spiky dandelion light fittings, around 150 people had gathered at Christchurch’s Town Hall to hear the public apology to survivors of abuse in state care. Even though the proceedings were being broadcast virtually from Wellington, the emotion in the room was raw and real. Pyramids of tissue packets stood at the door, shoulders gently squeezed by strangers, distant wails heard through the walls. 

A few hours beforehand, Ōtautahi-born Stacey Morrison opened proceedings by sharing a bit about her own connections with the space. She joked about being amazed by the longevity of the dandelion fountains, and revealed she performed in The King & I in the downstairs auditorium as an Aranui High student. While it would be easy to make a joke about Christchurch people and high schools, it only deepened the feelings of intimacy and connection in the room. 

“I am very much of this place,” Morrison said. “But I want to recognise all that it has taken for you to be here today. It is a big day and it is your day.”

In a tea break I found Joan Bellingham, who I met a few years ago when she told her story at a workshop for journalists. Bellingham endured over a decade of torture in the form electro-shock therapy at Princess Margaret Hospital from 1970-1982, and has been a dogged advocate for state care survivors receiving redress. “We’ve been waiting six years to be here today, all these people from all walks of life who have all been through traumas.” 

Her big hope for the apology was to get more clarity around the redress process. Not only have her experiences taken a huge toll on her health over the course of her life, but she has also suffered financially. “I haven’t had the opportunity to follow through with my profession because of what happened to me,” she explained. “Consequently, I’ve never had much money or a very good quality of life. We’ve been promised it for so long, and I just feel so despondent.” 

As everyone filed quietly back into the Lime Room for the apology lead-in speeches, I asked Joan what she thought of the general atmosphere. “Everyone is so amazingly calm,” she said. “But are we really that calm or are we just being polite?” 

Soon, we had an answer. The crowd muttered when Andrew Bridgman, chief executive for Oranga Tamariki, walked on screen, with an audible “prick” from the back row. He spoke of childhood being something filled with ice creams, friends and celebrations, but instead “we took that away from you, and gave you a childhood of fear.” Heads started to hang lower, glasses came off and tissues came out. “The state should have cared for you, and it didn’t,” he said. 

“We are sorry for not giving you a safe place to grow up. We are sorry for not listening, for looking away… To the adults those children have now become, we are sorry.” 

The room stayed silent as a few people walked out. The wellbeing support staff discretely handed tissues and checked in on those who were sitting alone. When solicitor general Una Jagose started to speak there were multiple boos in the room and arms thrown up in the air. Another solitary figure rose out of their seat in tears and put both palms on the pounamu at the front of the room for the entirety of Jagose’s speech, flanked by two supporters and Morrison. 

At other moments, it felt like a pressure valve had been released on decades of suffering. “You motherfuckers owe us our lives, that’s what you owe us!” a man yelled while walking back to his seat from a brief break. He looked around afterwards and apologised, almost bewildered by his own words. As the survivors spoke from Wellington, the crowd frequently erupted in cheers – particularly for Tu Chapman calling out Christopher Luxon’s notable absence in the room. 

Things were just as raucous during the start of the official apology. When a heckler interrupted Christopher Luxon and speaker Gerry Brownlee asked “where’s the police”, the Christchurch crowd scoffed and jeered – perhaps not the right moment to plea for help from that particular institution. But a hush fell once more as Christopher Luxon spoke, broken only by audible sobs coming from somewhere near the front and chairs shuffling as people got up to leave. 

A woman walked past the news cameras with a sign “Doomed to Zoom – shame on govt”, a reference to the anger many survivors have felt at missing out on attending the apology in person due to space limitations at parliament. “I wish I had been chosen to be there today,” Joan said to me earlier. “I haven’t had the opportunity to do that yet.” 

After the apology, I found Joan again. “I feel dubious about the redress, because we’ve been told in the past that something’s going to happen, but I haven’t seen anything personally happen for me,” she said. “I’d like to know how they’re going to approach it, and what way they’re going to approach it, and when they’re going to approach it. They didn’t really let us know, except to say that things would be happening. We’re still in a state of confusion.” 

That said, she welcomed the “fantastic” initiative to remove the names of perpetrators from public spaces. Recently she went to pick up her partner Marg from her local bridge club, and was shocked to find a “great big picture” of the doctor who administered more than 200 electric shock treatments to her for over a decade. “I would love that to be taken down,” she said. “Because whenever I see it, it makes me feel like I’ve just been pushed aside again.” 

For Joan, the fight is not over – just before I found her again, she was pressing Wigram MP Megan Woods for more information about the redress. But this afternoon, the sun is shining and her and Marg have to head home and mark this milestone in a decades-long battle. 

“We’re going to open a bottle of bubbly,” she said. “And then we’ll keep pushing.”

– Alex Casey