We invite you to hear Dr Oliver Sutherland speak about battling the racism of our justice and social welfare systems for fifty years. Ti Lamusse from the university’s Institute of Criminology will respond.
The session is at 5.30pm on Wednesday 15 June at 2/57 Willis Street, Wellington.
In 1977, Oliver Sutherland said the misuse of shock equipment at Lake Alice, if proved, would constitute “perhaps the most appalling abuse of children in the guardianship of the state that this country has known”. This has been finally and starkly recognised by the Abuse in Care Royal Commission of Inquiry.
Oliver and the Auckland Committee on Racism and Discrimination (ACORD), became used to government agencies and ministers ducking for cover as they laid out not just individual cases, but the hard statistical facts of the racism that was in the very bones of our state institutions, especially those dealing with children.
The campaign to get a duty solicitor scheme, started with the Nelson Maori Committee’s ‘do it yourself’ legal aid scheme in 1972 – exactly 50 years ago. When Cabinet finally decided to implement a scheme, Oliver received a leaked Cabinet paper and he publicly critiqued the proposal. Acting on a request from the Minister of Justice, police officers searched his house and interrogated him and his partner at police HQ under the Official Secrets Act, despite the best efforts of their young lawyer, one David Lange.
Some things don’t change – children (most of them Māori) are still held on remand in police cells, and 57% of those incarcerated are identified as Māori. Each step of progress – like the duty solicitor scheme - has been fought for, over many years.
Ngā mihi nui
Philip Tremewan - for NZ Fabian Society
At the back of Unity Books
Wellington, WGN
New Zealand