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5:30 pm, September 9th, 2025 - 19 comments
Categories: Daily review -
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Daily review is also your post.
This provides Standardistas the opportunity to review events of the day.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Don’t forget to be kind to each other …
Is it too much to ask to cease with the articles on the Tom Phillips tragedy? The clicks for Briscoes, Temu and real estate can wait.
It is clear there is a narrative being formed, one that favours only one view in a multi faceted story.
My thoughts too.
1) The chief cooks and bottle washers are all singing from the same song sheet – reiterating each other over and again.
2) The police are being patted on the back with over the top gusto.
3) The mother of the children appears to have been pretty much left out of the picture.
Yes, everyone is relieved the children have been rescued. We know the police have been working hard on the case and deserve kudos. But what's with the seeming dismissal of the mother's role in all of this?
Yes, there's a court order of some sort, but I smell an agenda here.
Is it because their Mum is Maori?
I couldn't comment on Mum's situation, it is another thread in this horrible story.
So far it is the police narrative front and centre. A position they will not concede when there are so many unanswered questions as to their conduct.
I'm going to stick my neck out. The children's paternal grandparents are behind the court order. I'm picking they're after custody of the children and they are using an injunction to hold up any reunion of the children with their mother. That is appalling.
Or perhaps three traumatised children, one witnessed their father being shot dead, have better prospects of recovering from their ordeal away from the prurient gaze of the repeaters and their curtain-twitcher audience.
I've been thinking a lot about those children and what lies ahead for them. For some reason the fate of the Dionne quints keeps bobbing up into my consciousness.
There are parallels: a prolonged shared experience which only those who went through it can truly understand and appreciate; a certain enduring perception of them as a kind of freak-show; a lengthy removal from any kind of normal upbringing process within a family home.
Perhaps very wrong of me, but I don't believe it's going to turn out all that great for them, however much well-intentioned effort goes into their support.
Of course there is a need to give the children privacy while they slowly integrate back into society. Of course they are severely traumatised and need specialist care. Surely a reunion with their mother is an integral part of that care.
I feel for her. Four years of waking up every morning not knowing where her children were and at times whether they were still alive. She's been through a hell most of us could not imagine. Now she appears to be left out of the loop and can't even see her own kids.
The suppression order appears to have been on behalf of Julia Phillips (Mum of Tom, grandmother to the kids)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/tom-phillips-injunction-suppression-order-was-granted-over-details-of-case/D5J44CPJ5RFQ5BXF62NZS5YZMY/
I don't recall that any applications for custody from the mother were being reported. But that was 4 years ago, and it's entirely possible that her circumstances have changed, and she does now want custody.
NB: it is a very common situation for Family Court proceedings, and indeed, any information around the case, not to be made public (indeed, it is the default) – largely to protect the children involved.
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024/10/30/family-court-s-shroud-of-secrecy-must-be-dropped.html
Well, we know that the injunction to prevent reporting on the case has been asked for by Julia Phillips (Mum of Tom, grandmother to the kids)
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/tom-phillips-injunction-suppression-order-was-granted-over-details-of-case/D5J44CPJ5RFQ5BXF62NZS5YZMY/
We have no information over whether or not the Mum is involved in any family court proceedings – nor are we likely to – the family court is notoriously strict over non-reporting of any information associated with the cases it hears.
https://www.auckland.ac.nz/en/news/2024/10/30/family-court-s-shroud-of-secrecy-must-be-dropped.html
While I agree with you the sad fact is that the media is very strongly driven by reader analytics and as such the articles will continue as long as people keep clicking on and reading them.
Yep, and they will repeat every press release faithfully a la the good stenographers they are.
Unfortunately not enough people are reading stories like that for it to be deemed worthy of much more, even in a non-commercial space like RNZ.
Stuart Nash is really going all-in Trump as a steamroller over Shane Jones.
He's disgusting.
Ad, his wife was unimpressed as well.
how is he still trying to be in politics.
Locker room chat didn't stop trump!
True. But NZ isn’t so far gone as that. Apparently even Peters wasn’t amused, looks like Nash misread the room.
Nash has always "sailed too close to the wind". 4 times as a Minister, he infringed. Now he says he was "Stabbed in the back ". Playing victim, he takes no responsibility for his bad choices.
So Luxon telling the RSB what he would like falls in the same area. No ethics either of them.
You can add the ministers that chose to tell fibs during the nurses and teachers pay negotiations.
Consequence free is what you get with such weak
managementleadership.