In the field of history, lively and all-too-often antagonistic debates abound about how to remember the past in a way that is responsible and ethically reflects events that are still butterfly-effecting their way into the present. Once we have got the remembering out of the way, however, we are still left with the question: what do we do about it? Stephen Winters’ lecture on the legacy of state intervention in childcare gone wrong struck me as a vital part of the quest for the physical manifestation of ethical memory. Financial compensation via monetary redress programs is one of the simplest solutions for paying back the toll of the state’s mistakes – but the psychological scarring of childhood harm and the impacts it has over time present problems of staggering scale in figuring how much money to pay and who should pay it. Even the intellectual giants that are Google and Wikipedia lack a handy converter for units of historical harm to the Aotearoa New Zealand dollar.

Ethical memory begins with the historical fact of children being harmed while in the state’s care, but even this basic starting point can be deeply contested right out of the gate. The fuzziness of historical records, the general reluctance by most human beings to note down evidence of their own wrongdoing and the pure length of time that has passed make it fabulously difficult to survey the damage done, not to mention quantify it in monetary terms. Even more so when the state itself develops a dedicated legal strategy for defending itself from claimants, as it did in 2008. When the compensation for historical harm is handled by a party that is itself investigating whether it is responsible for that harm, outside scrutiny is integral to ensuring an ethical outcome. Knowing that monetary redress has been handled entirely ‘in-house’ by government ministries is like hearing jokes about dead babies: I’m laughing, but Jesus is telling me to stop.

The eventual arrival of redress policy at a seven-tiered system of increasing harm severity packages the complexity of mishandled state childcare into a clean, woefully oversimplified envelope. This compromise between pragmatic bookkeeping, the actual needs of victims and the attention spans of MPs is not nearly good enough to properly compensate the many relevant parties, and Winters’ suggestions would go a long way towards helping to overcome those shortfalls. Bringing Māori voices into the system to speak for their own needs, increasing impartiality and improving consistency are just a few of these suggestions, and need to take their place at the table alongside financial practicality and the availability of expertise. All of this reflects the fundamental issue that monetary redress is so complicated that no one person can come up with these solutions on their own; we need conceptual thinkers, engineers who can bring those concepts into living reality and boots-on-the-ground workers to actually carry the programs out. The task of bringing justice to childhood victims of state intervention is, like so many other issues, nuanced to a nauseating degree. However, even if we are not experts in relevant fields or stakeholders ourselves, it pays to keep eyes open to how the legacies of our government’s mistakes are remembered and handled, or the sands of time will swallow those memories and take our values with them.

Image Credits

Puzzle 29, Josh Madison (https://joshmadison.com/2020/04/13/puzzle-29/)

White Sands National Monument – New Mexico – late evening – contemplating the setting sun, Wikipedia Commons (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:White_Sands_National_Monument_-_New_Mexico_-_late_evening_-_contemplating_the_setting_sun_-_(17478215804).jpg)