What The State Keeps Hidden

AMONG THE MANY QUESTIONS raised by the Abuse in Care inquiry is the cruel nature of the state’s responses. Among the worst examples of this official cruelty is the way in which, over many years, Crown Law impeded the timely compensation of victims. There is something deeply troubling about the state’s legal division, with its effectively inexhaustible resources (at least when compared to those available to the victims of abuse and their legal representatives) waging a war of financial attrition against these extraordinarily vulnerable citizens. What is it that makes public servants so determined to prevent the state from acknowledging liability for even its most egregious sins? Why is the state so vicious in its own defence?

The best place to start looking for answers is in the psychological realm of human solidarity and institutional pride. One has only to think of military units and the esprit de corps so crucial to their effectiveness. In a social environment where loyalty is identified as the supreme virtue, anything threatening that loyalty must be confronted and destroyed. All other virtues, such as justice, accountability and truth-telling, are deemed to be of secondary importance. Indeed, if the choice is between defending the unit and responding to one or more of these secondary considerations, then loyalty to the unit will always win.

Since almost every state traces its origins to bodies of armed men, it is hardly to be wondered at that state institutions place a similar premium on institutional loyalty. No less than an effective military unit, or army, the state is acutely vulnerable to anything likely to undermine its servants’ morale. Admitting to error, or, worse still, to criminal behaviour, raises fears that the loyalty of the state’s subjects/citizens will be undermined.

A state that admits to making one mistake raises instantly the possibility that it has made others. Its decisions, formerly absolute and unchallengeable, come to be seen as tentative, subject to revision, or even reversal. Such a state will find it increasingly difficult to impose its will. Certainly, it will lose the ability to inspire fear. And a state that is not feared runs a palpable risk of not being obeyed.

Paradoxically, it is the state’s power to enforce decisions that are in clear violation of both reason and morality that inspires the most fear in the minds of its subjects/citizens. The message conveyed is one of savagery and unresponsiveness. Like James Cameron’s Terminator: “It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop” – until it has utterly crushed its challenger/s.

That this is how the New Zealand state sees itself, or, at least, used to see itself, is revealed with particular clarity in the Arthur Allan Thomas case. No matter how much new evidence was presented; no matter how compelling the arguments in favour of Thomas’s acquittal, the Court of Appeal repeatedly upheld his convictions. Undaunted by the public’s outrage at the court’s apparent willingness to uphold an obvious injustice, the Judiciary’s most senior representatives made it clear that they would not be persuaded to set Thomas free. The Court of Appeal simply could not be seen to have got it wrong.

To free Thomas, one part of the state was ultimately required to wage war upon another. The Executive, in the form of New Zealand’s pugnacious Prime Minister, Rob Muldoon, simply outmanoeuvred the Judiciary by convening a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Thomas conviction. Significantly, this was not headed by a member of the New Zealand Judiciary, but by an Australian judge known for his independence of mind.

No longer protected by the courts, furious members of the New Zealand Police (which did not emerge well from the Inquiry) would regularly turn up to the Royal Commission’s hearings and hurl abuse at the Aussie interloper. The cops never did accept their culpability in the false conviction and imprisonment of Thomas, and the Court of Appeal never forgave Muldoon for effectively over-ruling its judgements. Second-guessing the New Zealand state is not a game for the faint-hearted!

But, if the injustices meted out to Arthur Allan Thomas (as well as, twenty years later, Peter Ellis) left an abiding unease in the public’s mind about the trustworthiness of its justice system, then its response to any confirmation that thousands of young New Zealanders had been terribly abused whilst in the custody and under the supervision of the New Zealand state would presumably be several orders of magnitude greater than simple “unease”. No rational citizen could ever again repose the slightest trust in the wisdom and benevolence of state institutions.

Small wonder then that so much was done for so long to prevent the awful truth about abuse in care from penetrating the public’s consciousness. The resistance of Crown Law, no matter how outrageous, was, in purely legal terms, entirely understandable. To acknowledge the state’s responsibility for decades of abusive behaviour would carry the not insignificant risk of leaving taxpayers liable for compensation amounting to billions of dollars. Drawing out the process to the maximum extent possible may not have been in the least bit compassionate – or just – but it did present itself as the most effective way of reducing the state’s liability. While the victims of its failings are all-too-mortal, the state is not. Barring bloody revolution and/or defeat in war, the state is immortal.

The other factor which the state can count on in matters such as the Abuse in Care inquiry is the degree to which so many of its citizens identify themselves with its interests. Imperfect though it may be, New Zealand’s democratic system of government makes it relatively easy for the state to present itself as the servant of the people it purportedly serves.

Like the soldiers of a regiment, many New Zealand citizens offer their country an inexhaustible quantum of loyalty. Like the regimental colours, New Zealand’s flag is seen by patriots as quasi-sacred. Whistle-blowers seeking to besmirch the honour of the nation for which it stands should expect no mercy.

Those dumfounded by the quietude of the New Zealand public’s response to the Report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care shouldn’t be. Quite apart from the fact that the Inquiry’s most disturbing evidence is buried away in the millions of words printed in the Report’s sixteen volumes, the half-century inquired into (1950-1999) is now at least a quarter-of-a-century removed from the New Zealand of today. That said, at some place, buried deep in the Kiwi Collective Conscience, lies the realisation that abuse on such a scale couldn’t have happened had generations of New Zealanders not quietly decided to look the other way.

In the end, this collective aversion to disreputable realities is what all states rely upon. It is not what the state reveals to us that guarantees our loyalty and obedience, it is what its servants keep hidden.

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Chris Trotter is New Zealand’s most provocative leftwing political commentator, with 30 years of experience writing professionally about New Zealand politics. He identifies as a “libertarian socialist” and now writes regularly for the Democracy Project, producing his column “From the Left”.