Today’s interview of the Deputy Prime Minister on The Nation was disturbing.

I was in Cabinet between 2017 and 2020 Gloriavale was never drawn to my attention.

To see the comfort being offered by the Regional Public Service Commissioner at the direction of the Cabinet Social Wellbeing Committee, in the face of an Employment Court judgement holding they were profiting from the child labour of boys from 6 years of age, is downright wrong.

Gloriavale is not an organisation that has any redeeming features, it is 50 years of secrecy, making money off child labour and abusing of woman physically and sexually from birth.

As Chief Judge Inglis said a girl’s fate was “assigned at birth, having been born female”.

That fate in my opinion, based on the judgement, is “servitude”; Criminal Slavery.

The Government must stop having chummy meetings, these are predators which Govt has a moral duty to step in now and stop what is blatant child abuse.

NZ First is calling for a full Commission of Enquiry as to how a man described in 1996 by the Chief Justice Eichelbaum as a sexual predator was allowed by government officials to enslave these young people, deliberately isolating them from the world, subjecting them to hard labour and sexual abuse.

Without, repeat without, any Government department taking responsibility for the vulnerable children.

The children need to be freed, NOW, and the government officials who have failed to protect them, held to account.