The Commerce Select Committee had the benefit of two high performing ex-ministers today, with the Hon Nick Smith a courteous and penetrating chair, and David Cunliffe doing the honours for Labour. The rest of the committee looked on.

Nick  permitted himself a wry question of the two New Zealand Law Society representatives when it became clear that they were presenting diametrically opposing views. Was it usual he asked, or was he seeing history made?

The lawyers responded that they were accustomed to presenting competing arguments. But Nick was right. It was unusual, though I think not unprecedented.

I approve whole-heartedly of the NZLS presenting both sides of arguments where the profession is unlikely to be of one mind.

I sat through far too many submissions from the Law Society where they were no help at all on the most knotty questions. .

Their excuse was that they were not there to debate contentious policy. Instead they saw their role as being to help improve the technical quality with expert suggestions for clarification. Trouble is they did often express fervent support for fashionable causes, even causes contrary to long held principles underpinning our justice system. 

For example they were all in favour of the Clean Slate Bill, that suppresses the criminal records of most offenders after  7 years, and instructs them to lie if asked about their offending. But wait – there was one exception, they thought that it should not apply to benefit people who wanted to be lawyers, or to work for lawyers in positions requiring trust.

And when it was obvious that there were divided views in the profession they often ducked even technical questions about the quality of expression. Recent Attorneys General have failed to prevent bills having deliberately uncertain or novel wording designed to dump politically awkward matters on the courts.

In my experience the Law Society was often too squeamish to point out even these blisters on the rule of law.

So I hope that the Society crystallizes today's practice into general use. Select Committees will learn far more from skilled presentation of competing perspectives and elucidation of the often unintended consequences of provisions, than from an artificial and unlikely presentation of one view, or no view.

It does not derogate from my approval, but it was a pity that the Consumer Law Reform Bill on which they were presenting led one of the presenters into flights of imagination.

The Bill was sadly in need of testing for legal quality. If it was still proceeding under the auspices of an ACT Minister it should alone have been enough to split the party. Bills like this are the case for the rejuvenation of an analytical Ministry of Justice as a control department. The Bill does some necessary things, a few desirable, and then scores a number of consumer own goals, with prescription that should never have passed the tests of the Regulatory Reform Bill being worked on by Mr Boscawen's colleague, Rodney Hide.

One of the Law Society reps gave orthodox lawyerly analysis. The other offered worthy sentiment couched as economics and legal theory. If it was either it was from schools unknown to me. I think I heard Rajan Prasad  cited as an economic sage, but I must have been mistaken. And it must have been hard for the other lawyer to sit politely when the committee was told that they should over-ride freedom of contract by competent adults because "law should mimic what a perfect system would produce if everyone was acting fairrly and in each other's best interests".

That is theology not law. It could only be administered by priests, with god-derived powers to know more than the parties to contracts. Perhaps that is the point. Now we have no priests there are plenty of candidates to fill their supple shoes.

Today's announcement that Kaipara Council is to get a central government  "review team" to "to assist Kaipara to work through its issues" is another straw on the back of the local government camel created in 2002 when they all got "general competence" or the power to do whatever came into the Councillors' heads as a good idea.

That was constitutional barbarism then, and we are reaping the costs now. Among other things, it reinforced the trend to Council being a full time occupation for too many  who would never get such a job from any boss who needed value for money, and further burdened the extraordinary few for whom part time public service was once the crowning of a successful career outside.

The government is getting plenty of examples to show why it must press ahead with its nobbling reforms. 

Too many Councils are getting into strife, then leaving their ratepayers to demand rescue from the government. There is some excuse for those who have blown their budgets on Rolls Royce water and sewage schemes. The government let the Ministry of Health set absurd standards that are simply unjustified on any environmental measure that takes account of wasted money and energy. But still, the local authorities failed to say no.

This was foreseen in my blog comparison of Kaipara to Athens. Here we have the government forced into the position of the Merkel and her Germans;

a)      damned for letting the Council get into hopeless commitments,

b)      damned if they now rescue Kaipara, because it will encourage a host of other imprudent Councils to demand the same (not least Auckland, with its nutty train plans, and its hostility to subdivision and intensification in its leafy suburbs, but expecting the government to subsidise its people who cant afford the consequent high housing costs,

c)       damned if they do not rescue Kaipara’s ratepayers from electing incompetents,

d)      damned for being anti-democratic when they suspend local democracy to clean up the mess, as they had to do with Canterbury Regional Council (and now Christchurch City).

 No government will tolerate a situation where it is damned in so many ways without having tools to control and limit their risks.
We can expect to see a significant change to tighten the control strings on Councils:

a)      If they get it wrong, it will allow councillors to run elections blaming the tight control from Wellington for every disappointment and using that as an excuse for incompetence.

b)      If they get it right it will probably be by going back to law more like what we had before the sorry reforms of 2002, where Councils are simply not permitted to do whatever they want – under law, not the discretionary whim of Welllington officials.

I detest "empower" but the word is most apt in connection with the restoration of victims of crime.

Today Christie Marceau's family took their cause to Parliament, petitioning for a criminal justice system less prone to subordinating victims to the interests of criminals.

I happen not to support more changes to bail. But I support fully the constant pressure from such families and the Sensible Sentencing Trust, for restoration of the balance between the victim and the criminal.

Crime disempowers victims. It drives home to them, and all the innocent associated with them, the fragility of their safety, and of civilisation. It crushes victims with their helplessness, the violation drives home their awareness of dependence on others to protect them from bullies bigger and more ruthless and less honest or decent and well meaning than themselves.

The trial and in particular sentencing should be the reassertion of balance, the restoration of the expectation that civility and social norms will pay, the convincing rebuttal to the evidence up to then (for the victim) that crime pays, cheats prosper and bullies prevail.

The judges at sentencing are rebalancing  the scales of justice, wielding the sword of justice for the innocent majority against those who would otherwise make them all mugs for sticking to the rules.

So I found disturbing recent reporting of senior judges' late and rushed comments to a Select Committee considering the Victims Rights Reform Bill.

The Bill purports to remove some of the restrictions that have lead to Court censorship of "impact statements"  that have added insult to the injury of victims. In fact the Bill's changes are less straightforward than victims thought. In some respects may even reduce the likelihood  that victims will get to say what they think to the offender.

It looks very much as if judges have been used by officials to head off an alarming potential  burst of independence and leadership from the Select Committee.  As reported the judges, instead of presenting as champions for vicitms on sentencing,  look like apologists for the offenders.

" They said the Victims of Crime Reform Bill could create expectations that a victim could express a view on sentencing, which was not provided for in law. This risks "causing further upset and trauma to victims and undermining confidence in the judiciary".

That called for further investigation. The letter from the Chief High Court Judge and the Chief District Court Judge is posted on the Select Committee site here. So why not urge that it be made clear that victims could express a view on sentencing. Offenders and their families and whanau already have that right. Why should whanau have a greater right to be heard than the victim?

27 Offender may request court to hear person on personal, family, whanau, community, and cultural background of offender

• (1) If an offender appears before a court for sentencing, the offender may request the court to hear any person or persons called by the offender to speak on—

  • (a) the personal, family, whanau, community, and cultural background of the offender:

  • (b) the way in which that background may have related to the commission of the offence:

  • (c) any processes that have been tried to resolve, or that are available to resolve, issues relating to the offence, involving the offender and his or her family, whanau, or community and the victim or victims of the offence:

  • (d) how support from the family, whanau, or community may be available to help prevent further offending by the offender:

  • (e) how the offender's background, or family, whanau, or community support may be relevant in respect of possible sentences.

  (2) The court must hear a person or persons called by the offender under this section on any of the matters specified in subsection (1) unless the court is satisfied that there is some special reason that makes this unnecessary or inappropriate.

  (3) If the court declines to hear a person called by the offender under this section, the court must give reasons for doing so.

  (4) Without limiting any other powers of a court to adjourn, the court may adjourn the proceedings to enable arrangements to be made to hear a person or persons under this section.

  (5) If an offender does not make a request under this section, the court may suggest to the offender that it may be of assistance to the court to hear a person or persons called by the offender on any of the matters specified in subsection (1). 

Making it clear that victims should be heard would give meaning to other provisions of the Sentencing Act that are too often treated as mere formalities, pious statements that need not interfere with the Court's grand role as therapist for offenders.

7 Purposes of sentencing or otherwise dealing with offenders

(1) The purposes for which a court may sentence or otherwise deal with an offender are—

• • …(c) to provide for the interests of the victim of the offence; or

8  Principles of sentencing or otherwise dealing with offenders

• In sentencing or otherwise dealing with an offender the court—

  • (a) must take into account the gravity of the offending in the particular case, including the degree of culpability of the offender; and

  • (b) must take into account the seriousness of the type of offence in comparison with other types of offences, as indicated by the maximum penalties prescribed for the offences; and

  • (c) must impose the maximum penalty prescribed for the offence if the offending is within the most serious of cases for which that penalty is prescribed, unless circumstances relating to the offender make that inappropriate; and

  • (d) must impose a penalty near to the maximum prescribed for the offence if the offending is near to the most serious of cases for which that penalty is prescribed, unless circumstances relating to the offender make that inappropriate; and

  • (e) must take into account the general desirability of consistency with appropriate sentencing levels and other means of dealing with offenders in respect of similar offenders committing similar offences in similar circumstances; and

  • (f) must take into account any information provided to the court concerning the effect of the offending on the victim;

10 Court must take into account offer, agreement, response, or measure to make amends

• (1) In sentencing or otherwise dealing with an offender the court must take into account—

  • (a) any offer of amends, whether financial or by means of the performance of any work or service, made by or on behalf of the offender to the victim:

  • (b) any agreement between the offender and the victim as to how the offender may remedy the wrong, loss, or damage caused by the offender or ensure that the offending will not continue or recur:

  • (c) the response of the offender or the offender's family, whanau, or family group to the offending:

By sending me this link to an interview with Daniel Kahneman, a friend has just improved my experience (actually the memory) of reading the book Thinking Fast and Slow earlier this year. You'll have to read at least the Der Spiegel interview to fully appreciate the difference.

I bought the book for my Kindle so I could lend my hard copy. It is the most interesting and valuable book I’ve read for many years. 

When enthusing to a friend he told me he bought copies for friends at Christmas then gave them only to his family, because he “saw no point in sacrificing family comparative advantage by gving everyone else the same leg up”. 

Thinking of great books brings up Isaacson’s marvellous biography of Steve Jobs.

 Learning what a foul-mannered tyrant Jobs was made it even harder to hear about the employment law decision earlier this week, giving some whinger $20k for insults his boss had thrown.

It is clear from how Apple grew, stumbled and nearly died, then revived after Jobs rejoined it (a bit) wiser than when he was previously ejected, that not even a genius like him could create and sustain a company like Apple in New Zealand. 

Long ago we took from adult New Zealanders the freedom to choose the risk and the potential return from employment with inspired but unpleasant obsessives like Steve Jobs. Without employment at will he would have been unable to winnow his team continually for genuine excellence, as he did with Apple, and his time and  the company’s money would have been consumed in opportunist law suits from staff upset by him.

Amazing to see the sympathetic coverage of the outraged reaction to Government suggestions that local government do what any sane householder does – if you really need something, and you have 'nice to have' assets your neighbours generally cope without – you sell what you must to fix the roof or otherwise attend to the necessaries first. 

Instead the whining reps of Christchurch are demanding that the rest of NZ borrow even more so they can keep their commercial 'jewels'. 

My last experience of the business nous of Canterbury local government was getting paid a rent bill just in time before their scandalously incompetent Target pest destruction business collapsed leaving creditors mourning.

No surprise that the unions campaign for more borrowing instead of cutting our cloth or selling nice to haves. They can rip off dopey politician run businesses much more easily than those where real owners money is at risk. 

It’s a good day for New Zealand.  Justice Hansen sentencing the Urewera four was having none of  what he called their “utterly implausible” excuses.  Well done, police and prosecutors.

 But a wider dividend goes well past the four.  So called “peace activists” will not rest easier tonight. Their cover is permanently blown by the terrorism evidence even though it could not be used. They know the police know who they are and what they mean by “peace”.  

 A few will some day be grateful they were stopped before the ‘game’ metastasised into something dreadful and lives were ruined or lost, including their own.

 Even if our “terrorists” were more “Dad’s Army” than Baader Meinhof or Red Brigades,  some at least could have become more dangerous. Training camps sift out a hard core from the wannabes. Standard terrorist modus operandi is to process lots of amiable recruits and naive fellow travellers, searching for that nugget – the person willing to kill and be killed for the cause.  Being inept is not being innocuous.  

 Still, we'll now be treated to ‘useful idiot’ solidarity and more public money wasted on appeals. 

 The defendants have been treated with great fairness and generosity by the New Zealand legal system:

• the Crown unilaterally dropped charges (on a legal technicality),
• blanket court suppression withheld damning phone interceptions and recorded conversations in buildings and cars.
• they were able to avoid answering or accounting for themselves in any way,
• the could make excuses late and  then only via unsworn propositions advanced by their lawyers.
• the jury whilst apparently not accepting those excuses (or it would have had to acquit on the Arms Act charges as well) nevertheless could not reach a verdict on the more serious charges;
• the Crown decision not to retry; and
• all this funded by $millions in public legal aid. 

 There is no moral victory for the offenders and their dupes.  Refusing to account for yourself, whilst having your lawyers put forward hilarious explanations of innocence  and fighting strenuously to suppress contrary evidence is not a heroic stance.  That is just busy lawyers exploiting an accommodating legal system.  

 And the raids?  Much is made of "proportionality". Only judges from safe leafy suburbs could invent a doctrine of proportionality in dealing with violence. Standard learning in the field shows that violence is least likely in the face of the most disproportionality. It is when force is thought to be balanced, or possibly impotent, that violence becomes worthwhile.

And race had nothing to do with it. Dozens of armed police stormed Dotcom’s castle. Sobered by the Jan Molenaar police killing and siege, it is time to drop the nonsense about Tuhoe being singled out for overbearing treatment.  Given the evidence they had, the police had no choice. 

 What evidence?  Well, the suppressed evidence. Suppression does not mean it does not exist, or that it was unreliable. Fairfax media bravely published some of it and was prosecuted for contempt for that.  Whilst some video footage was eventually used, there was a raft of phone recordings, taped conversations in buildings and cars which was not.  Once the terrorism charges were dropped, without other serious charges this interception evidence could not be used and was vigorously suppressed by the courts.

 There have been claims that the suppressed evidence just shows silly people doing naïve things.  Just Pub talk.  Killing John Key with a cow. 

 The useful idiots seem to be banking on a vast collective amnesia.  But too many people have seen the evidence, including retained copies of the excerpts published by the Post.  Though expunged from the public record in New Zealand, it cannot be removed from the international internet.   

In this case it will be just too laughable for the useful ones to maintain a critical mass of mainstream media belief that the arrested people just spent months playing hide and seek and discussing Maori medicine. 

 The intercepted conversations are similar to those recorded by police in “Operation Pendennis” in Australia the year before, which resulted in the arrest and conviction of a group of Islamic terrorists and wannabe terrorists. They had been planning to cause considerable loss of life. Some confessed or entered guilty pleas.  In both cases, much of the intercepted talk is silly, mundane, over excited  or boastful.  In Australia the judge described the antics as ‘keystone cops” and in one instance the trainees actually opened fire with their new rifles before getting out of their car.  There was similar sinister material in both cases.    

 All of us, including the would-be terrorists, can sleep easier because some rough men  were discourteous early one morning four years ago

This Fairfax report on th sentencing of Emily Longley's murderer, in the print version began by commenting on how the trial had exposed an ugliness in UK society.

That may be, but it has again  exposed the ugly gap between the quality of UK criminal justice and the system run for criminals, judges and lawyers here. Again.

Emily was murdered on 7 May last year. Her murderer, despite being aided by lying parents and some uncertainty about how she died, was sentenced straight away at the end of a fiercely defended trial, one year and two weeks later.

We can be almost certain that Elliott Turner will not risk an appeal against sentence because English judges are encouraged to increase the effective time in jail for criminals who abuse their appeal rights..

Compare all that with the disgrace of almost any of our major crimes. Weatherston, caught redhanded was not finally in prison with a certain sentence for Sophie's murder (in January 2008) until 5 years later, when the Supreme Court rejected his appeal bid in September last year. 

 NBR Editor Nevil Gibson ventures some heresy on Fiji, properly noting "My comments about Fiji should not be taken as gospel, given I was there for only a few days"

I'll do the same.

I was In Fiji with the family to celebrate Cathy's birthday at a dive camp. We had tents and huts without air con and only solar lights, but wonderfully relaxing. All four kids and their husbands and partners are scuba divers.

 It was my first time in Fiji for nearly 20 years. Last time I went up to see Dr Timoci Bavadra,  at Viseisei Village shortly after rebels deposed him as PM.

 This time I wasted no time on politics – it was purely to enjoy Cathy's happiness in the uninterrupted company of our adult children, with no cooking or other obligations.

Quite apart from the glorious reef diving I’d forgotten just how hospitable Fijians are – the astonishing missionary achievement that turned the Cannibal Isles into a deeply civilised place (in the real sense of the word civil) despite its poverty.

 It reminded me also of the dismaying absence of discussion in New Zealand of the foreign policy debacle that is just now coming to an end. The Hon Murray McCully was up there the week after us, signalling failure to oust Bainimarama.  From now on our boycott will be a matter of petty pride.

We’ve not brought them to heel, and we’ve forced the Fijians into flogging their fishing and other resources to an eager China, while squandering our reputation for punching above our weight diplomatically. EU and US policy has always respected what they saw as our ability, with Australia, to keep our corner calm and secure. They’ve watched, appalled as the mask slipped in our home patch as we moralised and harangued to no effect and watched ineffectually as the door opened to China.

Finally it is ending. But did you hear any debate on this in Parliament?  Instead Parliament was in paroxysms over the lumpy progress toward saving $24m in the MFAT budget. The opposition was demanding enquiries.

What about an inquiry to discover whether our disastrous Fiji performance speaks of feeble analysis or naive idealism within MFAT that will cost us far more than $24m if it is a capability matter. Hopefully it is all attributable to political over-rides on sound advice, but I fear otherwise.

The UK has tried to learn lessons from the mistakes that took them into the Iraq war. Our Parliament perhaps does not even know our Fiji policy has diminished our strategic position in the Pacific. Yet when trouble strikes, a strategic failure can be the equivalent of billions in wasted spending – certainly more than $24m.

This time in Fiji  I volunteered no political questions. And I draw no firm conclusions from casual holiday conversation. But I  I met no one who wanted the undemocratic chiefly rule back or the demagogic Indian Labour Party. Unprompted, different people told me of their respect for Bainimarama, including an Indian tourist operator, two taxi drivers, two long term expat business people from Europe, several indigenous Fijians, and some Tuvalan Fijians whose told us their parents in 1947 bought an island in Fiji in anticipation of the submersion of Tuvalu.

They like Bainimarama's even-handedness among the races, his hostility to corruption, and the relative efficiency of the military governors in their districts. They respect the obstacles he's faced.

 Of course they'd prefer freedom and functioning democracy, but they can not see a way to it. So in the meantime they are grateful that their dictator is benign.

While NZ was chewing on failure, Bainimarama was in India, meeting their President. Compared with that shouldn't we be asking why it appears we've had no clear objectives, no intelligent self-interest, no practical power to determine outcomes on Fiji, and now no success.

Isn't time for a bi-partisan review of the quality of our foreign policy capacity, both political and official. John Hayes has paid a political price within  National for daring to question the pompous orthdoxy Murray McCully took over from Winston Peters.

We're convinced we punch above our weight in world affairs. Some of us think it is because we can preach to others from a postiion of moral virtue. The Hon Phil Goff should do us that last service of making it politically possible to do a clear-eyed review of what went wrong on Fiji. We'll never get an opposition leader better placed to help the ruling party educate New Zealanders to the realities of our region and our feebleness without the respect of our former allies.

Labour is in a mood for confronting some past errors. It would be cleansing for them to put distance between then and now on foreign affairs.
They should get in before Gerald Hensley's upcoming expose of Lange's deception of the New Zealand public as well as our allies, shows them up for a continuing pattern.

The protesting ratepayers of Kaipara have good reasons to gripe:

• None of them ran up the huge debt that will double their rates over the next several years, and keep multiplying them, it was done for them by their duly elected councillors;
• None of them could stop the budget blow-out on a foolishly lavish sewage scheme, only the officers supervising, and perhaps some councillors would have known enough;.
• Few if any of them would have endorsed the central government drive for such folly, in new requirements and guidelines on water quality and sewage treatment
• Many of them may have voted against the mayor and councillors particularly responsible.

But we all suffer from bad government. There is no court to award protection from such unfairness. There is no cosmic 'Fair Go" or 'Target' to remedy failures of democracy by exposing the idiocy of those responsible.

Sure, central government might rescue Kaipara residents from the costs of their bad choice of leaders, by spreading it over even more people with even less ability to prevent the folly.

But rescuing people from the consequences of their neighbours taking local democracy too lightly, must surely compound the problem. Matamata will be in line for the same. Hamiltonians whose Councillors blew $30m on street racing without apparently even knowing it would love to be relieved of their Claudelands debt.

Auckland and Wellington voters elect green nut-jobs whose affection for trains is a matter of faith.They have faith that central government will gift them their train sets, unfortunately with some historical base. It is now clear that Michael Cullen rescued Toll Holdings and committed us to the waste of billions on our rail without Treasury advice that would have been unwelcome. Judged on the finance company director standard he'd be in jail.

The left/green faith in trains has nothing to do with public transport efficiency – buses are demonstrably better.  Only faith can overcome the overwhelming international evidence that commuter trains justify their vast costs only in dense cities of great size..

Many of the  Kaipara considerations for central government are similar to those facing the Germans who will decide whether Greeks should be rescued from the consequences of decades of electing fools and crooks to lead them.

I predict that the Germans now have little alternative but to show Europe there is no rescue of voters who would elect a gambler like Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras. He promises Greeks that the capitalists can't afford to enforce austerity.

Now they've no choice but to let the smaller country (Greece) go  to stop the democratic rot in Spain, Italy and now France. As long as voters think there is a Father Christmas somewhere, they are rewarded for electing con-men. The soothers of the left who are not liars must feel deep down that somewhere some fat capitalists have a store of wealth that can be looted to avoid having to pay the moral and now financial  bills for  their dishonest welfare state.

We shall see, in Kaipara and Greece. 

Maori TV excelled in last evening's hour long exploration of the complaints about the arrests, charges and the trial.

It was odd that defendants awaiting sentencing were not persuaded by their lawyers out of appearing. What a dilemma they present for the judge, having publicly shown an absence of remorse in the case of the Tuhoe two, and defiance in the case of the Parihaka pair.

It is odd to go through four and a half years without ever explaining why they were practicing with Molotovs in balaclavas, and taking strenuous steps to exclude evidence, up to the Supreme Court suppression, and (by not giving evidence themselves) ensuring that the Court never heard from  the only people there who knew "the whole truth" (they avoided the risk of cross-examination by getting their lawyers to raise their risible excuses) but then start strutting before you are sentenced.

Perhaps they did not ask their lawyers. Perhaps they thought their supporters needed  visible staunchness to help ignore the judge's comments on sentencing next week. They might be in prison after sentencing so would miss their chance to speak on TV.

Whatever the case, it was a triumph for Maori TV. As I expected, Julian Wilcox asked the right questions, though it grated to hear him purport to speak for Maoridom in pursuing Greg O'Connor.

I considered I was there  to speak for New Zealanders. That included the many Maori whose common sense would have been affronted by the ludicrous excuses, and the hyperbole of Pita Sharples and Hone Harawira and other notables castigating the Police and the (then Labour) Government.

I'm sure most observers of the ugly hikoi of bludgers who turned up in Wellington to shout obscenities at the justice system we all depend on, felt sorry for Tuhoe and others who they purported to represent.

But refreshing myself  to appear on TV reminded me of how deplorable has been the performance of the New Zealand legal system in all this.

What a catalogue:

a) the relevant law was badly drafted (as I pointed out when it was being passed);

b) the Solicitor General appears to have noticed the flaws inexcusably late, after warrants had been issued in reliance on it;

c) if the Police alerted media early to make a splash out of the arrests it backfired when  charges failed;

c) the Court's secret sessions and secret orders fertilised conspiracy theories that the Crown was being underhand;

d) If a brave newspaper had not leaked the sinister nature of the plots, the news for four years would have been entirely dominated by inventions of the accused and their supporters;

e) during the four year of skirmishing the official justice culture of secrecy (lack of a mechanism to rebut false claims) made the system look hapless, and potentially sinister;

f) Lenin's "useful idiots" were left un-opposed to turn the affair into a race clash, to the extent that Maori TV found no Maori lawyer  to put the case for the Crown last evening;

g) the Supreme Court persuaded itself that trespassing not shown to have affected any of the relevant landowners, despite a duty to weigh such impropriety against  "the need for an effective and credible system of justice", outweighed the desperate public need to know whether the Police had over-reacted;

I was asked last night by the other panelists what I'd do about the failure of the system to inspire confidence in anyone. I'd not thought that through. They thought there should be a public enquiry. 

The Dickensian delays in getting this case to trial alone would justify a Parliamentary inquiry into the quality of our courts and procedure. Add to that the low quality of judgments as useful statements of the law, to operate as practical guidance to all who live under it, and the continuing failure of anyone with authority in Justice to decalre and end to secrecy in the courts, and one could be tempted to support calls for an inquiry, just to see where the chips might fall.

It will not happen.  I cannot see a way to guarantee that it would not merely further damage the legal system, with no assurance of improvement.  There is no lawyer in Parliament with the legal mana to ensure quality in such a proceeding. Such a process should engage inspiring counsel to formulate and ask the hard questions, the way the best Senate enquiries do. If we could identify a quorum of thinkers such as those who engineered our ACC reform it might be worth the risk.

I can't see any such critical mass. We will not get solutions as radical as those that  finally reformed the system Dickens railed against. Lets work instead on the slow work of defending what is good against the justified but ill-directed outrage of citizens.
We have to hope for minor reforms until there are enough new people to take a constructive chain saw to the scaly accretions that drag our courts into such a mire.