A public inquiry into the disappearance of the Phillips children has found police and Oranga Tamariki minimised, overlooked and in some cases never read warnings from the children’s mother and older sisters before their father took them into the bush for four years, writes Henry Oliver in today’s excerpt from The Bulletin.

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The Report of the Public Inquiry into the Disappearance of the Phillips Children, conducted by Justice Simon Moore KC, was released yesterday. According reporting from James Ball of 1News, it found police and Oranga Tamariki could have prevented Tom Phillips from taking the children a second time, or found them earlier, had they shared more information and taken family concerns seriously.

Social Development Minister Louise Upston apologised directly to the children, saying “significant opportunities were missed, particularly between the two disappearances” and agencies “did not take all practical steps to protect you”.

‘Brushed aside’

Phillips first disappeared with the children for 18 days in September 2021, abandoning his ute below the high tide mark on Kiritehere Beach. Police believed he may have staged their deaths. He was showen to have “anti-government views”, was an alcoholic, and was motivated to keep the children from their mother. The report found those concerns “were not sufficiently conveyed to Oranga Tamariki.”

The children’s mother told the inquiry the area manager was “constantly unavailable”. Their older sister called Oranga Tamariki repeatedly in early October, asking whether the agency “would be held responsible if the children went missing again.” The agency never met with her and her concerns were never treated as a formal report of concern. Another sister swore an affidavit detailing controlling and abusive experiences with Phillips. The supervisor overseeing the case told the inquiry she could not recall reading it, saying “we can’t react to every piece of information.” The inquiry found it appeared no one read the affidavit at all.

On October 6, 2021, the agency told the Family Court the children were “completely fine,” without mentioning the family’s concerns or the police investigation.

The sighting police missed

The Herald’s Adam Pearse reported one of the more damning findings: police failed to properly follow up a credible sighting in May 2023. A Marokopa resident called police after a man she suspected was Phillips knocked on her door asking for help jump-starting his vehicle. She saw the children in the car.

Police dispatched a unit, but it was diverted to a family harm incident. There was no evidence of the unit’s actions related to the call, and police could not explain why it wasn’t followed up. She contacted police twice more, providing a photo of Phillips and Google Maps screenshots. Police did not investigate further.

Police Commissioner Richard Chambers conceded the failure was a “significant missed opportunity.” He said: “Had we been able to deal with it in the timely way that we should have, we may have been able to locate the children at that time.”

Police ‘understand how that sounds when you add them all up’

Deputy Commissioner Jill Rogers pushed back on the inquiry’s claim that better coordination could have prevented or ended the disappearance, RNZ’s Russell Palmer reported. “We don’t know that there would have been different outcomes. We had an extremely determined father there,” she said.

She said the May 2023 sighting was “a golden opportunity” but “it was never as simple as just going into the bush to get him out.” Pressed by Checkpoint host Lisa Owen on how police could know the outcome wouldn’t have changed, Rogers replied: “I understand how that sounds when you add them all up.”

Oranga Tamariki chief executive Amanda Malu was more forthcoming in taking responsibility. “We failed the children and the mother and older sisters,” she told RNZ. “We did not listen and pay anywhere near as much attention as we should have.”

‘Here we are again’

On The Spinoff today, Michelle Duff describes the report as revealing “parallel universes” – in one, children taken by an abusive father into the bush would be seen as at great risk; in the other, “no-one thinks the children are in danger. It’s just a camping trip! With their dad!”

Duff not only catalogues the reported failures, but notes how systemic racism is not directly addressed, but “it is in there, you just have to read between the lines”. “The report includes the thoughts of a senior Oranga Tamariki social worker, who, when interviewed by the inquiry, questioned whether the “narrative around [the] maternal whānau” may have impacted how the children’s sister was perceived by Oranga Tamariki. The report states: “We cannot but agree.” The children’s mother is Māori; Phillips and his family are Pākehā.”

Perhaps even sadder (if that’s possible) is that we’ve been here before. The last big government inquiry into child abuse was made after five-year-old Malachi Subecz was murdered by his caregiver in 2021. One of that report’s major findings was that government agencies needed to work together and centre children’s voices.

“Here we are again,” Duff writes. “There is nothing exceptional about this.”