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Kōrero: Communes and communities

Centrepoint, 1984

Centrepoint residents dish up lunch in the community's dining room in an excerpt from a 1984 television documentary. Led by charismatic therapist Bert Potter, Centrepoint emphasised sharing and personal liberation. Its members pooled their finances, shared possessions, slept in longhouses, and used communal toilets and showers without doors. The community faced ongoing problems with finances, the local council and public hostility, and in the early 1990s Potter was convicted and imprisoned on charges relating to drugs and sexual assault.

Te whakamahi i tēnei tūemi

TVNZ Television New Zealand

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Me pēnei te tohu i te whārang

Caren Wilton, Communes and communities – From Centrepoint to eco-villages: 1980s–21st century, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/mi/video/28121/centrepoint-1984 (accessed 4 June 2026).

He kōrero nā Caren Wilton, i tāngia i te 31 March 2011.

Comments

H McCann
31 October 2015
The story of CentrePoint is totally glossed over. The intention community for personal cover up for Burt Potter and co to have access to children and emotionally vulnerable adults. Burt Potter was a known paedophile who took advantaged of hundred of vulnerable children and adults for personal sexual and power over other gratification (under the pretence of therapy) for himself, his wife and the other adult core members of the commune. There was no experimentation with sexually it was hard core deliberate sexual exploitation particularly of children who their sex games for grooming began as young as two. He gave drugs to the children such as LSD and established drug labs and sold the drugs to the wider community. The convictions and the few that were charged only demonstrates the minimisation of the problem at that time in history. Many new of what was being carried out at CentrePoint however the police were motivated to do something only when drugs were centre stage to an investigation.