John MacDonald: Our handling of Gloriavale is a national shame

Canterbury Mornings with John MacDonald

Surely this is the final straw for Gloriavale. Or, more to the point, surely it’s the final straw for the Government.

Because it is absolutely shameful that it still exists.

This final straw, by the way, is the Court of Appeal ruling announced yesterday that the BNZ has every right to close the community’s bank accounts. For the simple reason that it doesn’t want to do business with them anymore.

And good on the Court of Appeal. More to the point, good on BNZ, which could turn out to be the outfit which does the most for those poor sods stuck there.

It will probably also force the hand of all those businesses on the West Coast that have been quite happy to turn a blind eye, as long as they get to do business with them and make a crust.

Because aside from being a place where kids are treated like slaves, where women are treated like sex slaves and lord knows what else, it is also a large business. A large financial entity which includes two trusts and 13 companies.

And there are many people who have done alright out of Gloriavale. They’ve made money servicing their property and everything else that needs doing at a place like that.

But for how much longer? The lawyer representing the people who have escaped the place and who took Gloriavale to court for ripping them off with all the crazy work hours is saying today that Gloriavale should be shut down.

He’s putting responsibility for that on the Government.

I would like nothing more than for that to happen, but I’m not sure whether the Government actually has any powers to do that.

But either way, this has to be one of this country’s greatest embarrassments. That, for years now, concerns about Gloriavale have been raised and —aside from the odd court case where creeps who have committed sex crimes have been hauled before the courts— Gloriavale’s been allowed to just keep on keeping-on.

What happened, which led to yesterday’s ruling, is BNZ told Gloriavale that it wanted to close all of its accounts – citing its human rights policy.

Gloriavale said ‘you can’t do that’, claiming that if they lost their bank accounts, their whole future would be in jeopardy. So they took the bank to the High Court and managed to get an interim injunction which forced BNZ to keep the accounts open.

The idea was that there would be a hearing down the track to decide whether BNZ would be in breach of its contract with Gloriavale if it closed the accounts.

But the BNZ wasn't going to sit around and wait for that to happen, and it went to the Court of Appeal. The Court of Appeal considered the case and released its finding yesterday that BNZ has every right to choose who it does and doesn’t do business with.

The fact that it has a human rights policy makes it pretty clear, I reckon. Although I bet there will be some people going through BNZ’s list of other clients to see if it’s following its human rights policy to the letter and isn't just singling-out Gloriavale.

But I wouldn’t even care if the BNZ was singling-out Gloriavale because that place needs to go. And if shutting down its bank accounts is one way to force it out of existence, then bring it on.

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