Attorney-General Judith Collins says she continues to have confidence in Solicitor-General Una Jagose, despite calls for the head of Crown Law to step down for how she has handled the claims of state abuse survivors.
Key survivor advocates have called for Jagose to be removed from her position as Solicitor-General.
They say Jagose is conflicted by years of ‘aggressively’ throwing everything at legal challenges to silence them, and neither survivors nor the public can have confidence in her ability to act with the integrity and transparency required of the country’s top legal offer, given her track record.
Jagose has not only led Crown Law for the past eight years but was closely involved in major historical cases in which the state’s legal tactics, withholding of evidence from police and survivors’ lawyers and attitudes towards survivors were found wanting by the Royal Commission into abuse in care.
“The Solicitor-General must stand down. She has no right to be in this position that is so influential; so powerful,” Lake Alice survivor Leoni McInroe told Newsroom.
“She has failed repeatedly, continuously. It’s not one mistake, she just continues to fail.
“She has made it very clear in all of their legal technicalities and assault on children that were abused – either in Lake Alice or in other situations – legally, she has fought vigorously and aggressively to have us go away,” McInroe said.
McInroe’s calls were backed by survivor and advocate Toni Jarvis, who wrote to Collins in August asking for Jagose’s removal. The man known publicly as Earl White has also called for Jagose to go after the way Crown Law fought his civil claim, which has since been used as a precedent for blocking other survivors accessing fair compensation.