Māori leader condemns Government’s apology location choice

Gideon Porter Russell Smith | Māori leader condemns Government's apology location choice

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A Māori clinician says the government chose the worst place – parliament – to make its apology to a selected few survivors of decades of abuse in state care.

Russell Smith, of Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Kahu descent, is a member of Te Ohaaki a Hine, the National Network Ending Sexual Violence Together.

He says giving an apology within the institution that created the laws allowing abuse in state care was entirely inappropriate.

“Going and meeting with them in their space, that’s 1-0-1 from our view. You know, having people being selected from a ballot to come in to the House of Parliament… so that they can hear an apology, from the House, is like … it just perpetuates the harm,” says Smith.

Russell Smith says to make matters worse, only a limited number of the thousands of survivors could attend the apology in parliament, and the government has no plans for a national tour to apologise to victims in their own communities.

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