The final report of the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Abuse in Care – to be tabled in parliament tomorrow – is a monumental achievement. It is a repository of immense tragedy and grief – and a storehouse of hope.

The product of nearly six years’ work, the report’s 16 volumes cover accounts of survivors’ suffering in state and faith-based care between 1950 and 1999. The volumes also detail the avoidance, obfuscation and delays by those responsible for enabling, concealing and minimising that abuse.

The report will indict successive governments for the prejudice, callousness and political calculation that rendered people in care largely invisible, and their lives dispensable.

It will also put it beyond doubt that New Zealand’s laws, public policies and state institutions enabled that abuse.

Out of the resulting pain, the commission’s report will be an insistent demand for change.

While its focus is historical, the report also has a transformational purpose. Systemic abuse in out-of-home care continues, and we can see from its interim reporting that the commission is clear the responsibility for putting an end to it lies with the government.

The commission’s terms of reference asked it to analyse New Zealand’s histories of........

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