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ABSTRACT
This paper provides a comparative institutionalist critique of New Zealand’s monetary redress process for survivors of abuse in care. Using an Irish comparator, the paper advances an institutionalist critique that focusses on how programme operations affect survivors’ interests. The paper first describes the historic claims processes in New Zealand and Ireland and then assesses monetary redress practice against four characteristic survivor interests: cost, transparency, support and justice.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1. New Zealand uses the same institutional processes, mutatis mutandis, for contemporary claims.
2. Some claimants lodge ‘joint claims’ with more than one ministry. In these cases, the ministries coordinate a response.
3. For some information on the historic claims process in Health, see Webber (Citation2013). The details of Health’s process are redacted from the public version of that report. As of 10 November 2017, the redacted report is available on www.parliamentnz.co.nz.
4. For New Zealand’s accident compensation programme, see Bismark and Paterson (Citation2006).
5. XY and Others [2016] NZHC 1196 offers the best publicly available discussion.
6. All monetary values are given in unadjusted New Zealand dollars. For Irish values (originally in euros), 1 January 2006 was used as a benchmark conversion date, representing the point at which the Irish programme had issued approximate 50% of settlements. The conversion rate is 1.74 NZ dollars to 1 euro. Historic conversion data were derived from www.ofx.com.
7. The $37,700 figure is given by the Office of the Minister of Social Development (Citation2014, 6). An amount of $40,000 is given in Webber (Citation2013, 16).
8. Traveller children are mentioned in the report, but there is no serious investigation of their experience in care. For discussion of Travellers in the Ryan Report see O’Sullivan (Citation2009).
9. I could not find demographic data on New Zealand survivors. However, international data suggest that survivor populations tend to experience significant overlapping disadvantages (Higgins Citation2010; Lundy Citation2016, 15 f28, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse Citation2015, 179, Watson Citation2011).
10. Average payments for unfiled and filed claims are $18,860 and $19,809, respectively (Ministry of Social Development Citation2018). Since all filed claims are represented, and filed claims have a higher average value, this is evidence that representation is associated with higher settlements. However, that variance may reflect the influence of confounding variables, such as evidential quality.
11. Names and specific details were changed to preserve anonymity.
12. The Canadian Independent Assessment Process was a component of the 2006 Indian Residential Settlement Agreement. For information about this programme, see Regan (Citation2010).
13. As of 20 December 2017, the letters exchanged between Finlayson and the Commission were available at https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3224939/HRC-Letters.pdf.
14. Prior to the fast-track programme the ‘success’ rate was 63% (Webber Citation2013, 17).
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Stephen Winter
Dr Stephen Winter is a Senior Lecturer in Political Theory. His primary research concerns the rectification of state wrongdoing.