Luxon spoke about 2pm on Thursday at Manukau Super Clinic.
On Wednesday, an inquiry into abuse in state care and faith-based organisations was released publicly and tabled at Parliament.
Luxon said the Government was partnering with a redress support group and would consult with them on the timelines for when that would become available.
He said the survivors were “just very grateful that they had been heard and believed, and for many of them that was what they wanted to see”.
One of the volumes from the roughly 3000-page report highlighted a case study from a boot camp on Aotea Great Barrier Island, where children were subjected to horrific sexual and physical abuse and were forced to dig trenches they thought were their own graves.
Christopher Luxon and Shane Reti speaks to media at the Manukau Super Clinic. 25 July 2024. NZ Herald Photograph by Ben Dickens
During speeches in Parliament responding to the report, survivors watching from the public gallery more than once shouted down to the speakers that there should be no more boot camps.
One of the biggest cheers of the evening was for Green co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick saying survivors had demanded no military-style boot camps.
Asked if reading the report had prompted him to rethink the government’s boot camp policy, Luxon argued it was a very different situation from the case study the report identified.
“I want to be very clear about that because what we’re proposing is something very very different, having read the full accounts. I’ve read all the 81 accounts of the individuals and I’ve read the five case studies of the centres as well.
“What we’re doing is something very very different. That was about unvetted staff, we have in this case senior psychologists and two social workers working with 10 young people consistently. That was about being isolated, we have three-month programme, nine month at home, we involve the whānau, we involve the family, we involve other community organisations.
“That was a programme where there was no oversight and no monitoring, and we have massive amounts of protection and monitoring and safeguarding going on.
“We’re doing a powerful targeted intervention in the life of serious young offenders because we do not want them going down a pathway into bigger crime and into gang life in particular.”
He said he thought that “targeted intervention” was “actually a very positive thing”.
The report identified that the widespread abuse suffered in state and faith-based care had pushed many of those abused into gang life, prison or both.
The prime minister said government ministers had received the report just over three weeks ago, and survivors deserved a considered and appropriate response.
“I can tell you we are geared up and want to make sure that we do the right thing here. I appreciate that there’ll be a range of views with even within the survivor gropus and amongst the survivors themselves as to what they do and don’t want, it can often be very conflicting and very different. But we are determined to work our way through this.”
