Analysis: "How on earth can this happen in New Zealand?"
By Jo Moir of RNZ
Anyone who read Tuesday's final report into the almost four-year disappearance of Tom Phillips and his children would have been asking just that while "shaking their head", according to the minister in charge of the inquiry Louise Upston.
Police Commissioner Richard Chambers and Oranga Tamariki (OT) chief executive Amanda Malu repeatedly referred to the failures and mistakes rife in the report as "missed opportunities" and both confessed they had not offered their resignation, nor had anyone in their respective agencies been held accountable for the harm's way Phillips' three children were put in.
The report did not hold back on those agencies the public naturally looks to keep some of our youngest and most vulnerable safe.
The report was released just over a year after fugitive dad Tom Phillips was shot dead. (Source: 1News)
Not only did it say the concerns of maternal whanau of the children were "minimised or overlooked by agencies for significant periods" but it even went as far as to say a more collaborative approach from OT and NZ Police "could have prevented the children's disappearance and brought them back sooner".
Some of the specific findings and events are a grim and bleak read, such as the woman who had Phillips in her car in May 2023, took a photograph of him, sighted his children, and called police — but they never came.
Despite police being dispatched, they were diverted to a family harm incident before they got there and later recorded the initial callout as 'no further action required'.
To this day, police have been unable to explain to the inquiry why the callout was designated as not needing any follow-up.
Then in November 2023, a decision was made to downsize the core investigation team to just three people, despite the children still being unaccounted for.
On Tuesday, Chambers said at that point more resources could have been put into the search, but in the same breath he said, "there's no doubt over the course of the four years we threw everything at this".
Both of those things can not be true.
Chambers was appointed into the top job about 10 months before Phillips died in a shootout with police, after they were called to reports of a burglary in the early hours of 8 September 2025.
Social Development Minister Louise Upston said the children were deprived of a happy childhood. (Source: 1News)
Both he and Police Minister Mark Mitchell had spoken publicly on many occasions about the need to find the children safely, and arrest Phillips.
Many meetings were had over that period, and decisions were being made all the time about how to conduct the search.
Yet an Independent Police Conduct Authority (IPCA) report in August was critical of the communication between police leadership and the officers on the ground in the lead-up to Phillips being shot.
It found one of the local officers making judgement calls about how to pursue Phillips and one of his children - who had been spotted breaking into a warehouse before taking off on a quad bike - had to ask the senior commander on shift what the plan was three times before getting a response.
Separate to that, despite a communications plan being prepared about how to arrest Phillips if he was sighted, it was never communicated to police comms staff or passed onto officers on the ground who were most likely to encounter Phillips.
Those failures were on Chambers' watch and don't marry with assurances from the commissioner and the minister they were prioritising finding Phillips and getting the children out of the bush safely.
Oranga Tamariki also came up short on many occasions over the years with one of the most damning findings in Tuesday's report being the agency's failure to pass on warnings from the children's mother and older siblings.
Indeed, it did not even read an affidavit from one of the sisters that outlined serious concerns.
On Tuesday, Upston told RNZ the ministry had already done significant work ahead of the report's release to "improve the safety and wellbeing of children" and insisted change was already underway.
If that was the case, it seems unbelievable Malu oversees a ministry that as recently as March this year had staff watch as a teenager was hit and slapped by his peers as he left a youth residence under OT's care.
Even worse, staff not only watched and seemingly condoned the physical assault ritual known as 'walking the line', but failed to even report it.
This is the same agency that just hours later its boss was insisting was doing everything it could to protect children in its care.
What is clear from Tuesday's events is that both NZ Police and Oranga Tamariki have systemic issues that still need to be resolved and people in positions of power who are prepared to tell the public one thing while doing another.
For all the mistakes however, Chambers and Malu should be credited for fronting up when it mattered.
The same can't be said for the prime minister, who didn't attend the press conference following the report's release and didn't make himself available to reporters afterwards to show leadership on such a bleak day.
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