I hope Labour, National, ACT and United Future have the wit and energy to ensure success of the Greens’ call for a formal inquiry into the Police decision to make the arrests. Parliament’s Justice and Electoral Committee should take it on, if a better qualified body is not appointed by the government. Only rampant hypocrisy could have the Maori Party not supporting it.

We should know what the Police found. It is important to know whether the Police are foolish, or racist, or merely misled by stupid law.

When the smug left (and right) are congratulating themselves on abolishing the offence of sedition, the people are entitled to know what kind of judgment is applied to the messy and essential task of detecting and disabling our local Rambos. Thugs will always emerge to take advantage of democracy’s apparent weakness. Democracies need Orwell’s “rough men” who defend it from those who would get their way by violence and threat when they know they can not persuade their fellow citizens with reason.

But they must be properly led and controlled. Only a full inquiry into what the Police acted on can reassure us that the Police are properly led, controlled under law, and competent.

If there is no successful charge, so that our racist would-be terrorists go free, we should all know why, and exactly what kind of behaviour is beyond the law. The people, not only political insiders,  should be equipped by the experience to judge what kind of law is needed to replace the stupid Terrorism Suppression Act.

The insiders have shown they can’t be trusted to make sound law. The Foreign Affairs Committee was usually incompetent on liberties issues.

Hearing that former Chairperson Graham Kelly thinks that Act is fine reminded me of some of their other pathetic work. The Bill which signed New Zealand up to the International Criminal Court is equally offensive.