Alcohol Race vs Father’s Funeral: Systemic Racism Issues Over Contrasting Sentences of Quarantine Fugitives

The finance minister was asked if systemic racism was at stake in a jail sentence handed down to a mother who escaped from a Hamilton isolation center with her children to attend their father’s tangi.

Grant Robertson was questioned on Friday about the fairness of the 14-day sentence handed down to the 37-year-old mother compared to the absence of jail time for the alcohol abuse of a Queenstown man.

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Martin James McVicar, 52, was sentenced to 40 hours of community service after he escaped from a Hamilton isolation hotel on July 9 to buy alcohol at a nearby liquor store.

McVicar also spent six days in pretrial detention at the Spring Hill Correctional Center.

In contrast, on Thursday, the 37-year-old mother was sentenced to 14 days in jail by Judge Noel Sainsbury for escaping the Distinction Hotel in Te Rapa on July 24 with her four children, ages 18, 17, 16 and 12.

Robertson declined to comment directly today on the apparent discrepancy of the two sentences, saying the separation of the judicial and executive levels of government made it inappropriate.

“The judiciary operates independently and they make their decisions,” Robertson said at the Covid-19 press conference today at 1 pm.

“Those decisions are there for the public to see and undoubtedly for some people they will see and can raise questions in their mind.

“As a politician in the midst of a situation where there is still the potential right of appeal for the people, I have to be very careful what I say.”

After arriving in New Zealand on July 20 from Brisbane, the mother and her children escaped isolation in an attempt to attend the father’s tangi after he died suddenly and unexpectedly.

They were located shortly thereafter and the mother and 18-year-old daughter were charged with intentionally violating the orders of the Covid-19 Public Health Response Act of 2020.

Robertson was questioned multiple times about the 14-day sentence, and one reporter noted: “We are at a time when people are critically questioning institutional racism in the judicial system.

“As a politician, what is your response, not to the sentences, but to the questions that the voters are asking, the people in the community who say that those two sentences are very different for crimes that are very similar?”

Robertson repeated that he had to be very careful with any comments with the possibility of appeals to the sentence.

“The judges in these cases make their judgments based on the facts before them. It is unwise for politicians to step into that, with perhaps a very obvious recent waiver, to comment on those decisions,” Robertson said.

“There are always appeal rights and situations we don’t want to get involved in. Obviously the rules are outlined very clearly to people about the fact that they need to stay in their managed isolation facilities.

“But I am simply not in a position to comment on the different circumstances of those cases.”

However, Robertson added that the government had made a concerted effort to improve the judicial system’s awareness of cultural factors in rehabilitation.

“Speaking more generally about the judicial system as a whole, we have been working very hard while we were in office, particularly through the work of people like Kelvin Davis to make sure we are providing a system that supports rehabilitation, integration, etc. that is culturally appropriate.

In sentencing the 37-year-old mother, Judge Sainsbury said there was an element of selfishness in the woman’s crime; saying that putting himself before the protection of the community “did not agree with tikanga,” reported RNZ.

She accepted that the pain had likely clouded the woman’s judgment and her negative tests gave her a false sense of security at the time.

However, he handed down a sentence of 14 days in prison for the charge; a result that caused shock and emotion in her daughter and other followers in the public gallery.

A man sitting at the back of the court insisted he could pay a fine, claiming “He has five children,” before saying “That’s embarrassing” when he left court.

The woman cried and hugged her daughter and other supporters before being taken to the cells from where she would be transported to prison.

The maximum penalty for failing to comply with orders under the 2020 Covid-19 Public Health Response Act is six months in prison or a fine of $ 4000.