Ani O’Brien
Like good faith disagreements and principled people. Dislike disingenuousness and Foucault. Care especially about women’s rights, justice, and democracy.
Tom Phillips is dead, his three children are now in the care of Oranga Tamariki, and a certain corner of the New Zealand internet has decided to martyr him as their patron saint of unfairly treated dads.
In this version of events, Phillips is a noble dad, a freedom fighter against a tyrannical Family Court, and his death is spun as proof of a conspiracy so vast it makes the Illuminati look disorganised. Social media has buzzed with people calling him a ‘hero’, saying he ‘died for his kids’, and insisting that the police were out to murder him all along.
Phillips was not a hero. He kidnapped his children. He alienated them from their mother, their wider family, their friends, and their school. He kept them in a makeshift camp in bleak and inadequate conditions; photos released by police show a living situation no child deserves.
He was also not simply ‘hiding’. He was breaking into local homes and businesses, stealing from his neighbours, teaching his kids to commit crimes, and arming them. When police closed in, he shot at an officer in a manner that can only be assumed was intended to kill. The cop he shot in the head and torso, critically injuring him, has now become a villain in this online mythology, cast as some kind of corrupt enforcer of a shadowy plot to destroy a loving father.
What Tom Phillips did was not love, nor resistance. It wasn’t bravery.
None of this is to say that all fathers who feel failed by the Family Court are wrong or dangerous. The truth is, there are legitimate grievances about the system: how long cases take, how financially and emotionally exhausting they are, and how alienation from children can devastate fathers who are trying to do the right thing. There are men who have been unfairly cut out of their children’s lives, and who are left without meaningful recourse. The system does not always get it right.
In some areas, there are severe backlogs. Northland alone has over 16,000 active Family Court cases, with an average case age exceeding 300 days.1 That’s nearly a year of limbo for a family seeking resolution. Across the country, the number of families waiting more than three years for a Family Court resolution has tripled. Hearing wait times are punitive: a half-day hearing can take three to six months to schedule, a one-day hearing eight to 12 months, and longer trials 12 to 24 months or more.2 This is critical time lost – parenting time, bonding time. It eats up both money and emotional reserve. No wonder frustrations simmer.3
Balancing the needs of children with the rights of both parents is a truly difficult task and when it falls to lawyers and courts, it gets messy. We need to be able to talk about improving the Family Court: to make it faster, more transparent, more consistent, and fairer to fathers who have not harmed their children or ex-partners. Those conversations are appropriate and should be had.
But Tom Phillips is not the man to build that conversation around. He was not a decent father wronged by the system. He was a man who broke the law repeatedly, endangered his children, and left a trail of harm in his wake. Making him the figurehead for reform not only insults the fathers who are doing it tough within the system, it undermines the cause entirely.
Especially since there is a lot of context that cannot be published or discussed. At the police press conference following Phillips’ death, a reporter from the New Zealand Herald asked a deeply alarming question – one that cannot be repeated here because of an urgent interim suppression order sought by Tom Phillips’ mother, the children’s grandmother. The suppression is intended to protect the children at the centre of this tragedy. It’s being challenged by some who argue for the public’s right to know and that the intention of the suppression is unfulfilled because rumours are flying around fuelling greater speculation.
The Police Minister, who knows the truth that is being suppressed, called Phillips a “monster”. I support this assessment. Our tongues may be tied by the courts, but trust me when I say this man is not your hero.
It is one thing to debate the fairness of our Family Court system, but elevating a man who has harmed his children, his community, and arguably himself into a kind of bush prophet is grotesque. It ignores the real victims: three children who just spent four of their formative years being dragged through hell, and who now have to navigate life in state care under the glare of a nation obsessed with their father’s legend.
1 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/northern-advocate/news/long-wait-times-for-northlands-family-court-users/IIP5JCFGLJFJFNDJE52UJVONK4/?
2 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/theres-just-no-closure-for-the-families-court-system-delays-continue-to-track-north/B4R4AV76XBFRNCM7WADHLZROHI/?
3 https://www.fdss.org.nz/litigating-in-family-court-why-early-resolution-matters-and-how-to-avoid-delays/?
This article was originally published by Change My Mind.
