Completely unsurprising

Back in May, we learned that climate polluters had bought themselves an exemption from the law (an exemption that will be passed through its first reading and sent to select committee under urgency this week), lobbying the Prime Minister in secret for a special law change in their favour. The Ombudsman has now completed their investigation of the failure to release that lobbying, and they are not impressed:

The Ombudsman has released a damning report into the failure of the Prime Minister’s Office to release a written briefing its chief policy adviser had received ahead of a controversial law change.

His report reveals that the adviser - who received the briefing note in hard copy and to his personal email address - was personally consulted on the request for information, but did not provide it.

The Ombudsman has referred the matter to the chief archivist and says it is “surprising” that the adviser does not recall the meetings in which the document was handed over.

The Ombudsman is being polite here. Because it is very clear what happened: the ministerial adviser lied to protect himself and his boss. And then he lied to the Ombudsman about lying, pretending he didn't remember. And the only people surprised by that are people who have to pretend, by virtue of their position, that the government gives one wet fart for the law.

The adviser's initial actions, in getting official documents sent to his private email account and then failing to create a full and accurate record, were a crime. That crime needs to be prosecuted. And while we're at it, we need to make non-compliance with the OIA a crime in its own right, defined as a "corrupt practice" in the Electoral Act, so that Ministers convicted of breaking it will be automatically removed from parliament.

Meanwhile, the next time anyone in power whines about trust in government declining, they can blame the Prime Minister and his staff. Because they've shown conclusively that those in power are corrupt, untrustworthy criminals. And only a fool would trust them.

This seems awfully familiar...

Last year, we saw almost-Police Commissioner Jevon McSkimming convicted for possessing child sexual abuse material. The conviction was an accident, something which came up during an investigation of McSkimming's past history of alleged sexual abuse. McSkimming had worked hard to gaslight his colleagues and discredit his victim, with the result that the police as an institution (and a bunch of very senior police officers as individuals) dragged their feet and systematically looked the other way on complaints about him, protecting their own while persecuting his victim. But eventually, an audit of his computer system turned up his criminal activity, and he became impossible for them to protect.

But there's a sequel. Because around the time new Police Commissioner Richard Chambers was denouncing his former colleague, people were complaining about him. And the police and IPCA sat on it for six months, not bothering to actually investigate it until early June. And the only reason we know about it at all is because it was leaked to RNZ. Which sounds exactly like the sort of foot-dragging that happened with McSkimming. From the police's response, you'd get the impression that they would have kept the whole thing secret if they could.

This isn't good enough. The police need to retain public trust, and that means they must be seen to be trustworthy and to obey the law. If something calls the trustworthiness of the Police Commissioner into question, the public deserve to know about it. And if he's actually under investigation, he needs to stand down and let someone else do the job - because its pretty obvious that he can't. It's that simple. And if this is too hard for police - if they can't follow the basic norms of ethical behaviour we expect from other public officials - then they should fucking quit. Otherwise people will draw the natural conclusion: that they're a corrupt shitshow interested in protecting themselves over the public, and we're better off without them.

There is a name for this

The Auditor-General has tabled their report on former MP Paul Eagle's spending while chief executive of the Chatham islands Council, and its not good, exposing serious management and integrity issues at the Council. Including this:

Auditor-General Grant Taylor and Assistant Auditor-General Melanie Webb said a project to refurbish the home which housed the council's chief executive was not well managed, and changes Eagle requested "increased the costs beyond what was necessary".

Quotes and contracts for the work on the property were found to have been created or edited by Eagle, as well as procurement memorandums created by him in 2025 had been backdated to the previous year.

[...]

"The information that the chief executive provided was misleading. Specifically, it created an incorrect picture about when certain events occurred (for example, when a contract was signed) or whether they had happened at all.

They decline to give a position on the legality of Eagle's actions, but there are a number of names for it: corruption. Fraud. More specifically, forgery, altering documents with intent to deceive, and using altered documents with intent to deceive. These are serious crimes, and Eagle needs to be prosecuted for them. When a person in power abuses their position to enrich or advantage themselves, then that is corruption, and they need to be held to account.

Our outdated anti-corruption laws

Last year a group of VTNZ staff were fired after being caught taking bribes to falsify driving test results. This isn't the first time this has happened, and it suggests there's a systematic problem (and there's a big government report on that). But one of the issues is that our anti-corruption laws no longer match the shape of our public service.

In the 2019 case, corrupt VTNZ staff were prosecuted for obtaining by deception, essentially for misleading NZTA about whether people had passed the test. Which got the job done - they went to jail - but the actual offence here is bribery, corruptly using an official position to extort a personal benefit. The two offences have a similar penalty (at least if the amount of money involved is large enough), but very different elements. And one actually recognises what happened and goes on corruption statistics, and one does not.

So why weren't previous offenders prosecuted for bribery? Because they couldn't be. Aotearoa's anti-bribery law applies only to "officials", defined as:

any person in the service of the Sovereign in right of New Zealand [sic](whether that service is honorary or not, and whether it is within or outside New Zealand), or any member or employee of any local authority or public body, or any person employed in the education service within the meaning of section 10(7) of the Education and Training Act 2020.

And despite the name, VTNZ is not a public body, and its employees are not public or state servants. They used to be, but Jenny Shipley privatised them in 1999. They're just an ordinary company, providing a service to the government under contract. "Management by contract" was meant to give greater accountability and transparency. But it turns out that when push comes to shove, it means less of both.

Such relations have become pervasive throughout the New Zealand state. Contractors perform all sorts of private functions. But our anti-bribery law was written in 1961, and is still framed in terms of a monolithic state with a clear distinction between public servants and others. It desperately needs to be changed, to cover anyone performing a public function on behalf of the state. That way, when they take bribes, we can at least call the crime by its name, and recognise that we have a corruption problem, rather than pretending that that's something which only happens elsewhere.

The same old problem

Another day, another IPCA report finding unlawful use of force by the police. This time, its a police officer who saw a woman give him a thumbs-down signal while driving, chased her nearly a kilometre to her home, violently assaulted her and tore her clothing under the pretext of "arresting" her, tried to break in, and pepper-sprayed her in the face when she surrendered. The IPCA found that none of that was legal - none of it. The purported "traffic stop" in response to the gesture was completely unjustified:

In our assessment, Officer A stopped her because he was annoyed by her gesturing to him in what was no doubt a rude and disparaging way. Therefore, in our view, the stop was unlawful.

...which means there was no basis for an arrest, and so no basis for use of force, so all if that was unlawful too.

This happened three years ago. In the interim, the victim pleaded guilty to failing to stop when signalled to do so, refusing to give an officer her details, and resisting arrest. The IPCA concludes that as the stop and arrest was unlawful, the conviction is unsafe, and recommends that the police use an available legal mechanism to ask for a rehearing of the sentence, then offer no evidence. Which is a way of letting them back away gracefully, without a formal judicial finding of wrongdoing on their part. But naturally, the police are having none of it. The Blue Gang always stands by their man - whether they're a child pornographer, a rapist, an evidence-planter, or just a petty bully in uniform.

And then the police wonder why the public don't trust them. This is why. Naked abuse of power shielded by official corruption. No accountability. A commitment to being unreformable. Its enough to make you think that abolition is the way forward. Certainly, we should be stripping powers and functions from them, and giving them to other agencies, without inherently abusive coercive powers, to reduce the harm police cause. To point out the obvious, the police can't do abusive bullying traffic stops under a pretence of legality if its absolutely not their job.

Meanwhile, the police simply saying "no" to the IPCA's recommendations makes it clear that we have a problem with accountability. The most obvious solution is to let the IPCA do directly what the police refuse to do, whether it is making applications for convictions to be set aside, or bringing employment proceedings or even prosecutions against police officers. The police won't hold themselves accountable, so someone else will have to do it for them.

Climate Change: Failure and fraud

RNZ yesterday had a piece about the regime's consultation on amendments to the Second Emissions Reduction Plan 2026-30, which closed yesterday. The headline is that the regime has officially given up on its carbon capture and storage fantasy, admitting that it will never happen and adjusting its emissions projections accordingly. This was doing all the heavy lifting over the next two emissions budgets, and without it they're basicly left with nothing (because they repealed everything that actually worked then crashed the carbon price to ensure the ETS wouldn't do anything either. Heckuva job there, National. No wonder our trade partners are worried...)

The other big news is that they now predict that they will miss the legislated 2030 methane target of a 10% drop in biogenic methane emissions from 2017 levels, instead achieving only a 7.9% reduction. Why? Because while they talk a big game about "technology" (their discussion document even includes a table with development pathways and expected deployment dates for various options), having removed agriculture from the ETS and forsworn regulating anything farmers do they have no way to ensure it is used - meaning that, for practical purposes, it might as well not exist. More importantly, despite assuming significant reductions from these fantasy technologies,

Higher forecast stock numbers are driving an increase in total agricultural emissions across the EB2 period compared with the forecast in the 2024 projections. While expectations of more uptake of mitigation technology result in a greater relative decrease in agricultural emissions through the EB2 period, this is not enough to offset increased production. The overall result is a 4.8 Mt increase in emissions from agriculture across the EB2 period, compared with that projected in ERP2.

Or, to put it another way: they removed environmental restrictions on farmers and let them keep on polluting without having to even pay for it, so of course they are now planning to. Again, repealing all effective policy leads to a blowout. Who knew?

(So what happens if they miss the methane target? Well, nothing. We have a target in law, with an explicit clause saying that there is no efective remedy for failing to meet it. "Our" government can burn us all to death, and all they will face is a wagging finger, because states gonna state. Plus of course the people who fucked this up - National - simply don't expect to be in power when the failure is announced, and are probably looking forward to attacking the then-government from opposition for "their" failure...)

And yet despite all that, National still claims it is going to meet our 2025 and 2030 emissions budgets, the first by a substantial margin, the second by a whisker:

Which looks great! Until you remember that those projections include significant methodological changes, and that last year He Pou a Rangi recommended lowering the budgets to account for them and ensure we were comparing like with like. While the government has not yet responded to this advice - I wonder why? - they are the numbers we should be using. The revised budgets are 283 MT for EB1 and 290 MT for EB2, and comparing National's projections with them shows they expect to meet EB1 by the merest whisker, and to miss EB2 by 10 million tons. As for EB3, the appendix shows they plan to be missing that by 18 MT.

If the regime refuses to adjust the emissions budgets as recommended, it will be able to claim a "surplus" of 7.8 MT, effectively by account fraud. It will then be able to bank that fraudulent surplus, and use it to cover up its failure in EB2. Which is pretty much how National "met" its Kyoto target as well: by fraud.

This is not something we should accept. We deserve honest carbon accounts just as we deserve honest financial ones. A regime which relies on fraud to claim to have achieved it targets is not just dishonest - it is criminal, and it should be treated as such.

Nothing has changed

In 2004 the government was forced to launch the Commission of Inquiry into Police Conduct after allegations of rape and sexual assault by high-ranking police officers. The inquiry found that police systematically disbelieved victims and covered for their own. It recommended significant changes to the Independent Police Conduct authority and police integrity system, and a decade-long monitoring program to ensure the changes stuck.

Twenty years later, and we learn that once again a high-ranking police officer has been accused of sexual assault and corruption. And the IPCA found that the police's response was not just to disbelieve the victim, but to prosecute her, while systematically covering for their own in order to protect their chances of promotion. The cover-up was enabled by those at the very top of the police: then-Commissioner Andrew Coster, two Deputy Commissioners and an Assistant Commissioner, as well as by numerous underlings. It only fell apart because the perpetrator - who Coster clearly wanted to succeed him as Commissioner - had his computer searched, resulting in a sudden prosecution and conviction for knowing possession of child pornography. A bunch of senior police officers have already quit, the IPCA has recommended beginning employment proceedings against others, and former Commissioner Coster seems likely to lose his cushy retirement job as the regime's "social investment" czar. The IPCA has also recommended significant changes to the police integrity system, including independent review of police employment and prosecution decisions, and the regime seems to be taking this seriously.

All of which is good. But is it enough? Because it is clear from all of this that despite the Bazeley inquiry, nothing has changed. The police are still a deeply corrupt institution, which covers up serious criminal offending by its own, allows them to act with impunity, and even tries to promote them into senior roles. It's still a boy's club, it's still rotten, even after the past changes and a decade of monitoring. And the worry is that no matter what changes are made, the police will make the right noises, pretend to go along with it, and then go right back to their business as usual of raping and abusing and lying and covering up. Behaving exactly like the gangs they pretend to be fighting. And its hard to see how the organisation can retain any public confidence whatsoever after this.

As other people have said, when the tree is producing this many bad apples, you don't just throw them away one by one. You cut off the whole branch - or cut down the tree, tear up the roots, and start again from scratch. And maybe we need to do that with the police.

Rotten to the core

There's not one, but two police corruption stories today. In the first, the police are refusing to say how many staff they are investigating over their internet use in the wake of Jevon McSkimming's prosecution for possessing objectionable material. In the second, over a hundred officers are being investigated for faking breath-test results, which from the timing was done in an effort to meet new Ministerial targets. Which is troubling for two reasons. Firstly, because the police received millions of dollars in incentive payments on the basis of those fraudulent tests (isn't there a name for that?) And second, because police who will lie to meet a breath test target will lie about other things as well - like who committed a crime, or whether they have a reasonable basis for that search. It calls their basic organisational honesty into question.

It is clear from this that the entire police force is rotten to the core. It needs a thorough cleanout, from the top down.

Stealing from their victims

Between 1950 and 1993 the New Zealand government tortured and abused up to 250,000 children in residential care facilities. Following decades of cover-up and denial, dragging out cases, slandering their victims, and denying redress, the government finally gave a two-faced "apology" last year. You might think that that would mean they'd finally provide proper compensation for their victims, but no - that would cost money. So instead, they're spending two-thirds of their announced $774 million package on "administration" - that is, on denying claims:

Less than a third of the government's $774 million abuse in care redress package will end up in the pockets of survivors.

Figures obtained by RNZ revealed only $205m was earmarked for paying new claims with $52m to go towards topping up previously closed claims.

In defence of the figures, Erica Stanford, the Minister leading the government's abuse in care response, said redress payments were not the most important thing for some survivors and some of the $774m in this year's Budget was going towards changing the care system and providing other supports.

However, $92m was for the civil servants who administered the redress funds and another $37m would pay for operating costs like premises and IT.

So basically they're stealing from their victims, while bundling up other costs to make a Big Number for PR purposes. Its revolting, the sign of a government driven more by austerity and PR concerns than by righting its past wrongs. And combined with the news that none of the public servants identified as being responsible will ever be held accountable, it makes it crystal clear that this government does not give a single sloppy shit about its victims.

The rotten, unaccountable crown

Between 1950 and 1993 the New Zealand government tortured and abused up to 250,000 children in residential care facilities. They then proceeded to cover it up in order to minimise their liability, dragging out cases, slandering their victims and ultimately denying redress. In its final report, the Inquiry into Abuse in Care declared that this policy was wrong, and named specific public servants who were responsible. Some of those public servants - including Solicitor-General Una Jagose - are still employed in positions of responsibility. But now, the government has decided none of them will ever be held accountable:

After examining its own conduct, the state has decided it will not take any action against public servants named or implicated in the landmark Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care.

[...]

Public Service commission deputy chief executive in charge of policy and integrity Hugo Vitalis told Newsroom he did not believe the behaviour of those identified amounted to ‘misconduct’ or ‘historical misconduct’.

“Nevertheless, in all cases the commission considered the commentary, discussed the matter with the relevant employer and was satisfied that no further action was required.”

I guess they've decided to accept Jagose's "befehl ist befehl" argument.

So, we have a huge crime by the state and its agents, and the state just washes its hands of it, holds no-one accountable, and refuses to compensate its victims properly. Apparently people are just meant to be happy with a bullshit, two-faced "apology". And then they wonder why public trust in them is declining. This is why. Because a state which outright refuses to hold itself accountable for torturing children is basically a criminal regime, and unworthy of trust or respect.

Showing the Americans how to do it II

In 2022, Brazilian voters kicked president Jair Bolsonaro out of office. He responded with an attempted coup. And now, he's being prosecuted for it:

Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, was charged Tuesday with overseeing a vast scheme to hold on to power after he lost the 2022 election, including one plot to annul the vote, disband courts and empower the military, and another to assassinate the nation’s president-elect.

The accusations, laid out in a 272-page indictment, suggested that Brazil came strikingly close to plunging back into, in effect, a military dictatorship nearly four decades into its modern democracy.

Brazil’s attorney general, Paulo Gonet Branco, indicted Mr. Bolsonaro and 33 other people, including a former spy chief, defense minister and national security adviser, accusing them of a series of crimes against Brazil’s democracy. The charges essentially adopted recommendations from Brazil’s federal police made in November.

This is how democracies defend themselves: with law and criminal charges. And as with South Korea, the contrast with America couldn't be clearer. And the refusal of America's political elite to defend their democracy and constitution from a violent insurrectionist is now having consequences all around the world.

ACT's problem is Luxon's problem

Back in 2023, a "prominent political figure" went on trial for historic sex offences. But we weren't allowed to know who they were or what political party they were "prominent" in, because it might affect the way we voted. At the time, I said that this was untenable; it was unfair to voters, it was unfair to the party (which I assumed would want to dispel the inevitable suspicion that they knew or were careless about this historical offending), and it was unfair to all its candidates (some of whom may have wished to avoid the taint of representing a party which hosted a sex offender). And it was terrible for our democracy:

Because if the party ends up in government and helping to make justice policy after the election, and then suppression is lifted, voters will rightly feel that they have been defrauded at the ballot box and that the government gained power by covering up child abuse. Which is obviously horrific for its legitimacy, and for public confidence in our democratic institutions.

Now that his name suppression has formally lapsed, we are allowed to formally know that the man was Tim Jago, and the party which benefitted from this suppression is ACT. Who are indeed helping to make justice policy, and are currently trying to rewrite te Tiriti o Waitangi and core elements of our constitution. ACT is able to do this because a judge covered up these allegations, preventing reporting of the party's institutional cover-up (not to mention connecting the dots with sexual harrassment and sexual assault within the party, not to mention the dodgy attitudes of its previous leader), and thereby preventing voters judging them accordingly. So, we have an illegitimate rewrite of our constitution by a government whose support is based, in part, on a colossal act of electoral fraud. Yeah, that's totally legitimate, and I'm sure people will have huge confidence in the political system which enables it.

People need to be asking Christopher Luxon how he feels about depending on the support of a party which covered up for a child abuser, and what he's going to do about it. Because he chose his friends. He chose to lie down with that dog. If he doesn't want the fleas, he knows what he can do about it.

Rotten to the core

Just a few months ago, Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming was one of the final two candidates for the position of police commissioner. Now, he's on leave and facing multiple investigations for unspecified wrongdoing:

The second-most powerful police officer in the country is on leave pending separate investigations, the Herald can reveal.

Deputy Commissioner Jevon McSkimming is being investigated by the Independent Police Conduct Authority, and the New Zealand Police.

The nature of the allegations against McSkimming cannot be reported.

And he's not the only one. Stuff reported back in October that a (now-former) senior police officer is being prosecuted for grooming a 12 year old girl. How "senior" he is is unclear, but it all adds to the impression that the police are rotten to the core, and that their senior leadership, the ones who are meant to set standards for everyone else, are criminals themselves (and particularly grotty ones at that). And it invites the question of how they possibly expect to have the trust and confidence of the public when this is the case.

A two-faced "apology"

Last month, the government formally apologised to victims of child torture and abuse-in-care. Part of the apology was meant to be for the state's long-standing policy of aggressively minimising its liabilities by dragging out cases, slandering its victims and ultimately denying redress. So you'd think that the state would actually have stopped that immoral policy, right? But of course not. In planning meetings leading up to the apology, it was continuing as usual:

Senior ministers raised concerns about the commitments the government made to survivors of abuse in care and the need to lower expectations, according to notes obtained by RNZ.

The comments came at a meeting on the eighth floor of the Beehive on 26 August, where ministers and government heads discussed what was needed for the formal apology for abuse in care on 12 November.

[...]

"AG [Attorney-General Judith Collins] reinforced concerns about setting precedents and being careful about what we commit to," Holsted wrote.

"Min Upston [Minister for Social Development Louise Upston] reiterated her concern about needing to lower expectations."

Because we wouldn't want to do the decent thing by properly compensating victims of state wrongdoing for the horrors inflicted on them and the damage done to their lives - that might "set a precedent". And we wouldn't want to suggest that we might, because that might led to "expectations" of both compensation, and future state behaviour.

Our Cabinet are monsters. They're doing exactly the same vicious, heartless shit which has denied victims justice and compounded the harm inflicted on them. In doing so, they've undercut the apology Luxon made, and made it clear that the state will never act in good faith over its crimes. Any meaningful apology would see these monsters gone.

Police: "It's OK if you're a cop"

Imagine you want to buy some guns, but you want to hide the fact from someone. So you abuse your access privileges to obtain the details of a registered owner, then use them to fraudulently register the weapons. If you or I did this, we'd obviously be going to jail. But apparently it's OK if you're a cop:

The South Island police officer was investigated after allegations surfaced that he illegally acquired firearms and concealed the purchases by registering them under false names.

He registered firearms under the names of innocent licensed firearm owners, intending to deceive the gun sellers and Te Tari Pūreke – Firearms Safety Authority.

[...]

The allegations were initially investigated by the police, who concluded the officer had not committed any criminal offences.

Police accepted the officer’s explanation that he used third-party names to acquire firearms to avoid conflict with his wife.

As a result, they found no grounds to proceed with either criminal charges or disciplinary action.

The IPCA disagrees. But they're a toothless sham, who don't get to make prosecution decisions, so the cop gets away with it. And to add insult to injury, he got to keep his firearms licence, despite clearly not being a fit and proper person to enjoy such trust.

This is just the ordinary, everyday corruption of a police force which sees itself as being above the laws they enforce on us peasants. Its the corruption of a police force which behaves essentially exactly like a criminal gang. And its not acceptable. Crime is not OK if you're a cop. And if the police refuse to understand that, then we should fire them all and get some honest ones instead.

The law means something

Former Ports of Auckland CEO Tony Gibson has been convicted of violating his duty to run a safe workplace over the death of one of his workers:

In a judgement released today, Judge Steve Bonnar found Gibson was guilty of one charge raised under the Health and Safety at Work Act (HSWA); the charge that alleged Gibson had failed to comply with his duty under the act to exercise due diligence, and therefore exposed the port workers to a risk of death or serious injury.

In the 146 page judgment, Bonnar concluded that Gibson was "ultimately responsible for health and safety" and he was required to exercise systems leadership. He ruled Gibson should have been aware of the need for improvement of the monitoring of the night shift, but that in failing to address associated shortfalls failed in his duty.

"I am satisfied beyond reasonable doubt that Mr Gibson's breach of his duty ... made it materially more likely that POAL would breach its duty of care to ensure that stevedores were not exposed to the risk of death or serious harm. His failure thereby exposed the stevedores to the risk of death or serious harm by being struck by objects from operating cranes."

Good. This is how the law is meant to work. Chief executives need to be strongly incentivised to run a safe workplace and not cut corners, and strict personal liability is the way to do that. And I'm glad that the law has passed its first test.

The question now is whether National will repeal it to protect their cronies from the consequences of their criminal behaviour.

More lawlessness from National

On Tuesday, sick of government stonewalling, the Waitangi Tribunal issued a rare court order, ordering the Minister of Health to release unredacted documents within 48 hours showing its reasoning for disestablishing Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority. The government's response to the lawful order of a court? Yeah, nah:

The Health Ministry has only partially adhered to a Waitangi Tribunal order for unredacted information regarding the closure of Te Aka Whai Ora, the Māori Health Authority.

[...]

A Ministry of Health spokesperson confirmed it released a number of documents on Thursday night, but asked for more for “consultation” before releasing the remaining documents.

There's a name for this: contempt. And as a standing commission of inquiry, the Tribunal has the power to punish it. And they should. While the penalty of a $1000 fine is derisory, Ministers need to learn that they are not above the law. And the shame of a conviction might focus his mind on proper comity towards the judiciary.

Of course, instead Ministers are again threatening to "reform" the Tribunal. Which sounds like a classic case of perversion of the course of justice to me.

Injustice for torture

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.

"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".

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".

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.

Jagose doesn't get it

The government held a formal apology ceremony this morning to victims of child torture and abuse-in-care. One of those "apologising" was Solicitor-General Una Jagose, who had played a key role in devising and implementing the government's legal strategy of aggressively minimising its liabilities, slandering its victims, and waiting for them to die. Was she actually sorry for this? Of course not! - her "apology" was a masterclass in minimisation, diversion, and misdirection - and it was greeted with a chorus of boos and heckling as a result. And when she was questioned about this afterwards [in liveblog, at 12:04PM], it was clear that she didn't get it:

Solicitor-General Una Jagose said she understood the reaction she received from survivors at this morning's event.

Jagose was met with boos and calls for her resignation, as she delivered the apology on behalf of Crown Law.

"I understand that wero, and I understand people see the lawyer that acts on government instruction and takes cases defending governments as the person in the way. So I understand why I might be seen as the barrier."

So, it's "befehl ist befehl". She was "only following orders". Except that she wasn't some passive tool here - she was devising and recommending the very legal strategy she is hiding behind. her pretending to be a victim flies in the face of both the Royal Commission's findings, and common decency. But I guess you don't get to be a top government lawyer by having any of that, do you?

Jagose is fundamentally tainted by this.If she doesn't have the decency to resign, then she needs to be sacked. And if the government refuses to do so, then they can bear the taint of publicly protecting her.

National suppresses the media

The government is doing its formal apology to victims of abuse-in-care at Parliament tomorrow, along with introducing a (still secret) bill addressing restitution. It will obviously be a big media event. But Newsroom's Aaron Smale, a journalist who has played a key role in exposing crown failure and wrongdoing in this saga, will not be welcome:

Parliament’s Speaker has barred leading investigative journalist Aaron Smale from attending the official Crown apology at Parliament to victims of abuse in state care.

Smale, who has covered for eight years the abuse of children and others in state institutions, and the Crown’s legal strategy to exhaust survivors legally to save money and reputations, will not be accredited to report for Newsroom on Tuesday when the apology is made.

The decision has offended one prominent abuse survivor, known as Earl White, who says: “It is a disgrace that the Government is penalising someone who uncovered the fact that so many people in power covered up sexual abuse like my own.”

Smale had apparently offended National ministers by asking extremely pointed questions about whether Attorney-General Judith Collins and Solicitor-General Una Jagose would be held accountable for their role in the coverup, as well as whether they understood the link between abuse-in-care and the formation of gangs. So they got their rubberstamp Speaker to ban him. It's an outright case of media suppression, another example of the government's contempt for democracy and its fear of being held to account. But that's apparently how this government governs now.

So, if you see a National MP on the street: ask them: why did they ban Smale? And if they don't answer, ask them again. Don't let them escape the basic accountability we all expect in a democracy.