Minister Louise Upston, who is responsible for the Government’s response to the inquiry, said she was “deeply sorry” that agencies “did not take all practical steps” to protect the Phillips children.
“Significant opportunities were missed, particularly between the two disappearances.
Minister Louise Upston apologised on behalf of the Government. Photo / Mark Mitchell
“The inquiry found that the harm caused by Tom Phillips isolating the children from family, friends and society was underplayed, minimised or overlooked by agencies for significant periods.”
She said that while the agencies “worked well together at times, a more consistent and collaborative interagency approach could have prevented the children’s disappearance the second time and brought them back sooner”.
Upston pointed to the police strengthening their missing persons policy to include instances where children are deliberately concealed or isolated, while also updating procedures to ensure senior oversight and appropriate resourcing was applied to complex investigations.
Police, Oranga Tamariki and Health New Zealand Te Whatu Ora had also updated child protection protocols to recognise more forms of harm and updating training for children’s workers to better identify abuse.
Police Commissioner Richard Chambers accepted mistakes were made. Photo / Cameron Pitney
Chambers, noting the “complex and unique situation”, acknowledged the police’s investigation was not given the appropriate level of “focus and resource” and accepted there were “gaps in information-sharing and follow-up discussions” with Oranga Tamariki.
One of the more damning revelations from the 200-page report was that the police had received a report from a Marokopa resident in mid-2023 who had seen Phillips and his children – but officers failed to act.
According to the report, a woman the report names as Rhonda called at 2pm on May 28, 2023 with a possible sighting after a man suspected to be Phillips knocked on her door asking for help jump-starting his vehicle.
After travelling with Phillips to the vehicle, Rhonda saw his children in the vehicle. She later expressed concern about the children’s welfare to police, given the vehicle was stuck down a forestry road.
Police dispatched a unit to the area shortly after Rhonda’s call but it was diverted to a family harm incident at a nearby address. The unit later advised no further action was required regarding Rhonda’s call, however, there was no evidence of the unit’s actions related to the call nor could police explain why it wasn’t followed up.
Rhonda’s sighting was followed up about 10 days later by another officer, who called Rhonda. She also provided the officer with a photo of Phillips.
However, after failing to identify the vehicle Rhonda had seen, police seemed to have “treated this facet of the investigation as having been taken as far as possible”, the report said.
Rhonda engaged with police a third time months later after police issued an arrest warrant for Phillips for the armed robbery of the Te Kūiti ANZ in early September, 2023.
Seeing the police’s photographs of Phillips and recognising him from her own image, Rhonda submitted another online report to police, spoke with another officer and even provided Google Maps screenshots where Rhonda thought the car had been parked in May.
However, police didn’t investigate her May sighting further, which the inquiry found was expected, given it had been more than 100 days since the sighting.
The report did acknowledge the vehicle was found almost two years later down a bank, which was a short distance from Rhonda’s estimated co-ordinates and not far from two of the camps Phillips used to hide his children across the four years.
Chambers, fronting media alongside Malu and Upston, agreed with the inquiry that failing to properly investigate the sighting was a “significant missed opportunity”.
“Had we been able to deal with it in the timely way that we should have, we may have been able to locate the children at that time.
“My staff were heading to deal with that in a timely way, they were diverted to deal with a family harm matter and that is fair, but what didn’t occur was a timely follow-up with another unit or the investigation team and that’s the missed opportunity.”
Tom Phillips was shot and killed by police after a four-year manhunt. Photo / RNZ, Police
He accepted staff made the “wrong decision”, later pointing to how police could have “listened more”, particularly to the children’s mother.
Many of the inquiry’s findings were critical of the level of communication, not just with witnesses and family, but between Oranga Tamariki and police.
Despite the agencies’ close relationship, Malu, who had admitted it was a key failure, was at a loss to explain how such poor communication took place, noting she became chief executive late last year.
“All I can say to you is we got it wrong, it’s unacceptable, it falls well below expected standards and it’s my job and the commissioner’s job to make it clear to our people that that’s not good enough.”
Neither Malu nor Chambers had offered their resignation over the matter but insisted they accepted responsibility for the failings of their agencies.
Upston accepted it was a “common thread” in post-incident reports that public agencies didn’t share information adequately.
“It’s incredibly frustrating to be in that situation where you hear it again, they haven’t shared the information that would have made a difference in reducing harm to the children.”
Adam Pearse is the Deputy Political Editor and part of the NZ Herald’s Press Gallery team based at Parliament in Wellington. He has worked for NZME since 2018, reporting for the Northern Advocate in Whangārei and the Herald in Auckland.