My emotion is my strength – Karen Chhour

“People comment a lot on how emotional I am.”

The children’s minister says she’s always been an emotional person. It’s her way of coping with trauma.

“Because if you bottle that up it turns into something quite nasty, right? It turns into anger, it turns into frustration, and you start to look in the mirror and not recognise that person that’s looking back at you.”

Karen Chhour says she sees these emotions as a strength, not a weakness.

At various points throughout the year there has been public commentary, and political jibes, at Chhour’s reaction to tough subject matter, tough questioning, and tough opposition.

And it’s fair to say that Chhour has been responsible for a lot of tough decisions this year.

Early in the term she began work on repealing Section 7AA of the Oranga Tamariki Act, which binds the ministry and the placement of children in its care to Te Tiriti o Waitangi.

Then the coalition promise of youth justice boot camps came. The pilot of the re-branded military-style youth academies launched just five days after the tabling of the report from the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care, which details the abuse endured by children sent to the bootcamps of the past.

Chhour has also been in charge of significant cost-cutting at Oranga Tamariki, leading to a restructure and change in service delivery which saw some community service providers have their contracts cut. 

Meanwhile, the head of the ministry – Chappie Te Kani – has been on personal medical leave for the second half of the year, during a time when the ministry is bedding in its new restructure and culture.

These moves have been met with strong opposition from all three opposition parties, who have been vocal in the House, Parliamentary committee hearings and media interviews.

In August, a tearful Chhour described Parliament as an unsafe workplace. She told 3 News she was being criticised for not being “Māori enough” and not being “the right kind of traumatised person” both by members of the public and Members of Parliament.

In response to Chhour, Te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer posted a video to social media. “The fragility is real,” the text on the screen read.

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters described the behaviour towards Chhour as “just a damned disgrace”.

Meanwhile, Labour Party leader Chris Hipkins said Chhour wasn’t coping as a minister.

She said at the time: “I’m still a person and I feel like I’m getting that stripped away from me day by day in this place and I’ve had enough.”

Chhour tells Newsroom that she doesn’t like to get emotional.

“But I do tell people that the day my tears run out in this place is the day I need to leave.”

In a recent interview with Newsroom, Act Party leader David Seymour spoke about the treatment of his MP as a lowlight of the year.

“The way that the opposition have attacked Karen – and to some extent, Nicole [McKee]. I think it’s really interesting that the three Government ministers that have been attacked the most are three Māori women,” he said, also referencing the focus on NZ First minister Casey Costello.

Seymour described Chhour as “the embodiment of Act”. 

“She has so many excuses but she doesn’t use any of them. She’s now fixing the department that abused her.”

In July, the Government accepted the report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care. In November the Prime Minister and heads of key government departments apologised for the neglect, abuse and torture children suffered at the hands of the state.

This was deeply personal for Chhour, who has experienced the state care system.

In her maiden speech, Chhour told Parliament she didn’t think she’d survive to the age of 10.

“For years I never really told my own story as I was ashamed of it,” she said at the time.

“As I got older I realised unless we are honest with ourselves about our past we cannot move forward.”

Chhour went on to detail her life being moved between family and foster care.

She ran away from an abusive home, but said her cries for help went unheard.

Her home environment was making her quiet, reserved, and easily upset. This made her a target for bullies.

“I was at the point where I didn’t know whether I wanted to wake up the next day,” she said at the time.

Chhour was told none of her family wanted her. “I have lived with these words my whole life.”

The now-minister also spoke about how her life changed; how she seized opportunities and how she and her husband started their family – him working his way up from an initial job as a compressor mechanic.

Does Chhour consider herself a survivor of abuse in state care?

“Yeah, I probably would.”

She didn’t disclose specific details of her experience, but through various interviews and speeches, Chhour has alluded to the abuse and trauma she endured as a young person.

Chhour says there’s a careful line to walk as a minister, “where you take that lived experience and you use that to drive you every day”.

“But there’s also that line of, it’s not just my story to tell – if that makes sense.”

Chhour says her experience gives her “time for pause”.

“When I hear about ideas and changes, I stop and think for a moment: what would that have looked like for me?”

The minister believes there are “too many distractions”, too many complications and too much bureaucracy in the care system.

“All those distractions are unhelpful for a young person,” she says.

Chhour is speaking from experience when she says: “They want to know that you’re going to be there, you’re going to help them, and that they’re going to be safe the next morning, no matter what happens.”

The minister is unapologetic about the repeal of 7AA, despite the opposition to stripping legislated Te Tiriti o Waitangi obligations based on anecdotal evidence. She believes it was the right thing to do, and says it has started conversations about the devolution of services to iwi and hapū – something she wants to see more of.

This is not the first time a government has tried to overhaul the care system. The culture has been hard to shift in the government department, across various iterations. But Chhour believes, finally, a culture shift for the better is underway.

Rather than spending more money to get the same poor outcomes (519 children were harmed while in state care in 2023, and some more than once), Chhour says she wants to create bespoke solutions and move away from one-size-fits-all.

She says the system needs to “pivot and flex” to best suit the needs of individual children. Spending more money and doing what the department has always done is not the solution.

While Chhour has been changing the focus for her department’s service delivery, the department has been going through a brutal restructure as a result of the coalition Government’s cost-cutting exercises.

In total, Oranga Tamariki axed 419 roles. Along the way there was a u-turn on the plans to cut the ministry’s legal team, and plenty of leaks from dissatisfied staff.

Then, in July last year, chief executive Chappie Te Kani announced he would be taking medical leave in September. Te Kani was supposed to be back shortly after his surgery; in November acting chief executive Andrew Bridgman said Te Kani needed more time. He was always supposed to be back on deck by the end of the year, but that didn’t happen.

Chhour says this is why there is clear ministerial leadership and direction to whoever sits in the chief executive’s chair.

“Because an agency cannot just rely on a chief executive to keep that going.”

It’s hard to know which of the various high-profile issues in Chhour’s portfolio have been the most contentious this year – there’s no shortage of options.

But the coalition’s bootcamp policy has to be a top contender.

The National Party campaigned on a return of these so-called bootcamps, despite previous iterations of the youth justice policy having few (if any) positive impacts. Meanwhile, the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care detailed the physical, sexual and psychological abuse children experienced in bootcamps of the past.

The current bootcamp pilot is notably different to the previous military-style academy run in Christchurch under a former National government, and significantly different to Whakapakiri (the camp run on Aotea/Great Barrier, where young people endured horrific abuse).

The Government has scolded media and opposition parties for calling their military-style academies ‘bootcamps’ (despite themselves referring to them as bootcamps during the campaign and early in the term).

But the expert evidence and official advice stands: there is nothing to suggest these programmes will work. The Government maintains we need to try something new, because nothing else is breaking the cycle of reoffending for the country’s hardest-to-reach young offenders.

The pilot programme has endured significant public scrutiny, both during the three-month residential component and since the 10 young men moved into the community mentoring part of the programme.

It’s been revealed that one young person dropped out early on, and was replaced. And three young people have reoffended since being released from the youth justice facility for the community component.

Meanwhile, one participant died in a car accident in Waikato in late November.

Both Chhour and Oranga Tamariki have hit back at the public scrutiny placed on the 10 young men, who agreed to take part in the pilot as an opportunity to change their trajectory.

“I think there’s been more scrutiny on these young people than any other young people gone before,” Chhour tells Newsroom.

“I’m very firm that we have to have consequences for bad behavior, but I don’t want to see young people sitting in a youth justice facility like a holding pen for Corrections when they turn 18. 

“So, if we can turn even a couple of people’s lives around, to me, that’s success.”

Chhour also sees whānau re-engagement as success. For many of these young people, relationships have broken down, or been severed, through frustration and “generational trauma”, but families are stepping up to support these young men, and show pride in their efforts and progress.

In September, Oranga Tamariki acting chief executive Andrew Bridgman shared an internal update with his staff, with the subject line: “I love you mum”.

His message included a story about rangatahi in a youth justice residence. 

“Like many of the young ones we work with, he and his whānau face some pretty significant challenges. Progress is measured in the small things, the little changes,” Bridgman wrote at the time.

Recently, the young person has been calling his mother every night.

“His mum let us know that for the first time since he was a child, he told her that he loved her. In fact, he now ends each nightly call with ‘I love you Mum’. 

“The small things matter. The little changes count. Because in the end they mean a son can tell his mum he loves her, and a mum can end each day knowing her son is going to be oky.”

Chhour began her 2021 maiden speech to Parliament by saying: “We often don’t have the hard conversations that are needed for many reasons. They are too hard to hear; and we don’t want to face the truth that things are not as they should be.”

While none of Chhour’s areas of responsibility make for light listening, there’s one area that continues to fly under the radar in terms of political rhetoric: sexual violence.

Law and order was a dominant theme throughout the 2023 election campaign, but those discussions centred on gangs and ram raids. That’s despite family violence and sexual violence being the most prevalent forms of offending in the country.

“It’s an issue and a topic people don’t want to talk about because it’s shameful; it’s shameful that we’ve even got to this level,” Chhour says.

Chhour, who unveiled the second-ever government action plan for the prevention of family and sexual violence in December, says the stat that strikes her is how many young people experience sexual violence.

About one in five (18 percent) 15-19-year-olds are affected by sexual violence. 

In total, 35 percent of women (one in three) and 12 percent of men (one in eight) are sexually assaulted in their lifetime. Those percentages rise for people with disabilities, and those who are LGBTQI+.

Meanwhile, instances of intimate partner violence are also high, especially for wāhine Māori and disabled adults.

Chhour says New Zealand needs to get rid of the shame associated with experiencing (and discussing) family violence and sexual violence. Talking helps people to better understand the signs, and the solutions.

“I’m really proud to be able to stand up and talk about this like it’s a natural thing to talk about, rather than it being behind closed doors.”

Growing up, Chhour says she hid in the background “and in the shadows”, “because that was a lot easier than to to be hurt or or harmed”.

But she doesn’t hide in the shadows anymore. Chhour says coming to Parliament has pushed her outside her comfort zone, and while being front and centre was difficult in the beginning, she’s realised she’s a lot stronger than she thought she was.

“I’m actually really proud of myself to be able to stand up and fight for what I think is right – not only for when I look at my children and the future I want to see for their children, but for the whole of New Zealand.”

Chhour says this is “a humbling kind of feeling”. “And if it saves one child, it’s worth it.”

She says she will fight for as long as she can as an MP.

“If that means I have to take those personal hits, that’s a sacrifice that I think is really worth it.”