Jason Walls: Newstalk ZB Political Editor on how the Government is preparing its response to the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care

The Government is preparing its response to the Royal Commission into Abuse in Care report after its release yesterday. 

It found about 200,000 were abused from the 655,000 in care between 1950 and 2019. 

There are 138 recommendations which include looking at allowing compensation claims through court, and an apology from the Government and religious organisations. 

Newstalk ZB Political Editor Jason Walls joined Ryan Bridge. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Government's preparing its response to the Royal Commission into Abuse
in State Care report, which was released yesterday. You would
have heard about this more than it's six hundred thousand
in care. Two hundred thousand were abused, that's one in three.
There are one hundred and thirty eight recommendations in this report,
so a lot to respond to news talks there be.
Political editor Jason Walls is with us this morning. Jason,

(00:21):
Good morning. Derek Ching in the Herald did a great
peace on this. Many of these recommendations seem to fly
in the face of the government's policy platform or agenda.

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Yes, good morning. There are a number of things that
were recommended in the report that do overlap in some
ways with what the government is doing today in terms
of what its policy agenda is. For example, I mean
a few people have made the point that the abuse
in state care, you know, it outlines a number of
what happens in state care. And then this weekend the

(00:54):
government is launching its military youth academies, which some people
have actually drawn a comparison to, and other things to
do with the Treaty of Whitehonguy and whatnot. So it's
an interesting piece. I would say that, yes, you can
see why some people might be making these arguments, but
at the same time, I mean arguments around gangs. I
think that it's a hard comparison to make at the

(01:16):
best time there. But in terms of the for example,
this weekend, in terms of the military academy, I think
the government will be arguing that they'll be using the
report to learn lessons about what happened in the past,
so it can't happen again. They've made the case for
these academies quite clearly, and I don't think because of
the report that they're going to go away. So you

(01:36):
can understand why some people are making these comparisons, and
I do think that that's why some people that were
in the public garalery yesterday yelled shame as Karen Shaw
started talking in the House yesterday during her speech.

Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yeah, I saw that many gang members were in state here.
Not all of them, and not everyone who was in
state here went on to be a gang member, but
many members were in state here. Is it going to
be politically difficult for the government to pay compensation to
people if they are currently in a gang.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
I think there are a number of hoops that the
government has to jump through here, and it's not going
to be easy by any means. It was hard to
pin the Prime Minister down on this question yesterday in
terms of the financial compensation. Obviously it's going to cost
a lot of money. He didn't have an estimate on
how much, and he said, frankly, it doesn't matter at
this stage. The government was willing to do that, but

(02:30):
the idea of doing that, I mean, I think that
the government will be able to separate the person from
the gang when it comes to the sort of situation
and be able to look at what happened in the
past and be able to move forward in a way.

Speaker 1 (02:43):
Jason, thank you for that. Jason Wall's News talksb's political editor.
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