April 17, 2024
Court upholds Oranga Tamariki expose
A Māori midwife has welcomed a Court of Appeal decision overturning an injunction on an online documentary about an Oranga Tamariki reverse uplift.
The High Court had put a freeze on the Newsroom story because it said it breached bans on reporting Family Court proceedings and reveal the identity of four tamariki who had been uplifted from what they had been told was their forever home with pākeha foster parents and placed with wider whānau of their birth parents.
Jean Te Huia, who was involved in another Newsroom story about the attempted uplift of a newborn baby from Hawke’s Bay Hospital, says Maori need access to media that is not afraid to reveal the truth about government wrongdoing.
“Our New Zealand media, particularly Melanie Reid and her staff, they were the woman that came to my aid in Hastings in 2019 with our case and without that support no one would have known what was actually going on behind the hospital walls,” Ms Te Huia says.