The full details of the encounter in the early hours of yesterday morning between Phillips and police are still to be made public, but what we do know is that having been tracked down by police after a burglary, the fugitive opened fire on officers.
Police returned fire and Phillips, who disappeared along with his three children in December 2021, was killed in the exchange. One of his children was present and is unharmed; the other two were found late yesterday.
The first police officer on the scene suffered a critical gunshot wound and is in hospital.
Fugitives often have a certain romantic appeal about them; in the 1960s serial prison escaper George Wilder’s antics kept New Zealand enthralled.
There was little such raffish attraction about Tom Phillips. Wilder’s crime spree was minor, non-violent and involved no-one else; Phillips dragged his three children into a situation not of their making, losing him the sympathy of most.
Phillips first disappeared, along with his children, in September 2021, saying he needed "time to clear his head" after custody issues between himself and the mother of the children.
After he surfaced, following an extensive police search, Phillips was charged with wasting police time and set down to appear in court in January 2022.
It was an appointment he would never make, retreating into the rugged west Waikato bush with the children the month before. Apart from fleeting and sporadic appearances and occasional crimes he had been suspected of committing, little has been seen of Phillips since.
Questions from earlier sightings of Phillips about whether the SAS might be brought in to hunt for him resurfaced, police saying that they did not want to take that extreme option for fear it would place the children at further risk.
Questions will, properly, be asked about the conduct of the police — concerning both the years-long period while Phillips was on the run, and the jarring tragic end which unfolded yesterday morning. No doubt there are lessons to be learned.
That said, this was a situation of Phillips’ making and choosing.
The fact that he was carrying several firearms when stopped by police indicates that he had no intention of quietly bringing this desperate domestic tragedy to an end of his own volition.
A family, and a small community, will endure the ramifications of yesterday’s events for years to come. Three children have, needlessly, lost their father. For them, this has terrible, life-long and, sadly avoidable, consequences.
Tāmaki Makaurau
It is always difficult to assess the wider ramifications of a by-election result. Each turns on its individual circumstances and — as in the case of Saturday’s Tamaki Makaurau contest — they tend to attract a significantly lower turnout than a general election.
That said, there are a few things which seem obvious about the decisive victory by Te Pāti Māori candidate and former broadcaster Oriini Kaipara over senior Labour MP Peeni Henare.
Firstly, even allowing for the special, sad circumstances of this by-election, it shows TPM have built strongly in the electorate: Ms Kaipara has an election night majority of 2938, with 2621 special votes still to be counted.
That said, the Greens did not stand in the by-election, and their 2023 candidate attracted nearly 3000 votes, so it would be premature to proclaim that Tamaki Makaurau is now a safe seat for TPM.
That will offer little comfort to Mr Henare and Labour. The party made a determined effort to win back Tamaki Makaurau and the fact that they came up well short will give them jitters about their likely fortunes in the Māori seats in the 2026 election.
The other "winners" from Saturday night were the parties in the governing coalition. They have already been aggressive in pointing out that Labour’s path to victory in 2026 will likely be with the help of parties they perceive as being wild-eyed and dangerous radicals — the Greens and Te Pāti Māori.
Saturday’s result will harden that perception and we can expect to hear much more rhetoric along those lines in the months ahead.
