I'm looking forward to Native Affairs this evening. Julian Wilcox will test the reasonableness of Tuhoe demands for apologies from the Police. I think the Police should not risk being thought to buckle to such conditions as the price of a 'normalised' relationship. It is doubtful that it is sensible to dignify with attention the purported leadership of a group so far from offering inspiring and constructive role models to its members.

I've agreed to be on his panel. I cannot complain about an establishment lack of spine in standing up for the colour-blind and even-handed rule of law, if I decline when asked to put the constitutional position.

I've generally found  Maori broadcasting to be more open-minded (though pithy) in discussing legal issues,  than MSM's PC brigade so memorably tagged by Winston Peters as 'sickly white liberals'.

Part of that is time. Maori broadcasters tend to take as long as it needs to explore a topic, so even if you're invited along to be whitey the foil, you still get enough time to put your case.

Frank McLaughlin is to become a Deputy Secretary of Justice.

Who's he, and so what?

Frank is a partner in Chapman Tripp, and one of the best lawyers I've had the privilege to work with (and because he is younger than me, to help train).

Partners in the top three law firms (of which Chapman Tripp is one) may have been earning as much as $1m per year. So why would Frank leave for an agency that has not carried much intellectual clout since the reform years of the 1960s and 1970s?

Justice should be one of the control departments, like Treasury, setting standards for analytical rigour that discipline other agencies – burning out wishful thinking and lack of principle and developments dangerous to the rule of law. Instead it has promoted many developments that have made our law more uncertain. 

Sadly, our separation of powers sees judges and lawyers without leadership, without inspiration and without influence sufficient to defend our legal inheritance. The monstrous discretions throughout the Financial Markets Conduct Bill are a case in point. 

I believe Frank is becoming a public servant to serve the public. He will head up the Ministry’s policy division and be a member of its senior management team. 

Some top professionals reach Frank's stage and take to yachts, or new wives, or holidays in Tuscany, or art investment. Others become directors. Frank is heading in a more ascetic direction. I hope he finds it as absorbing and worthwhile as I found Parliament.

In the US it is common for top people to move between business, academia, senior bureacracy, politics and regulatory agencies. The moves fertilise each sector with the wide experience ofr outside appointees. The regulatory limb of that practise has been facilitated by the spoils system of appointments, under which thousands of positions are open to change after each administration change.

I do not favour the spoils system, but I think New Zealand has been the poorer for having so little cross-fertilisation. Academia in particular suffers here from being seen as a berth for too many people with limited alternatives.

That is not Frank's problem. He was on Chapman Tripp's board. As the senior lawyer for many of its significant clients, including Meridian, NZX, AMP Capital, Treasury, MED, Fonterra and Telecom/Chorus he's put in huge hours for many years.

He's always had an interest in complex reform processes though they are rarely remunerative for firms. He was a Labour Party activist when I first knew him, having been NZUSA President after his student days. Part of his value in reform projects has been because of his intuitive appreciation of the public sector perspective, and his knowledge of Government processes. Frank’s work has included:

·         taking over from me the Dairy Board's instructions in the establishment of Fonterra  and advising on various of its international joint ventures;

·         acting for NZX on its transformation from a statutory body to a company;

·         advising the Kingdom of Tonga on a wide range of law reform, policy and legal matters;

·         advising Telecom on the Government’s ultra-fast broadband scheme;

·         acting for Treasury on the restructuring and sale of AMI Insurance.

He was a member of the Financial Markets Authority Establishment Board in 2010. I've wondered whether his absence from the FMA was because of his principled criticisms of the awful Financial Advisor regime. Frank oversaw the secretariat to the Webb Task Force on the reform of financial intermediaries which generated the momentum for the Financial Advisor law, but cannot be held responsible for it.

This morning The Nation asked where my political friends and supporters will direct their  votes and hopes and energies if ACT is a lost channel. With a dirigiste National forced to pander to the middle swing voters it must disappoint many of its supporters. And it knows that it needs a respectable and reliable coalition partner (or two) for the next election and beyond.

Many loyal members, committed to National's principles of freedom and personal responsibility, will be able to hold their noses and cast real-politik votes for National despite its apostasy, as the least worst option, but that will not be enough to liberate their enthusiasm and their contributions. A more pure idealism is essential to harness that energy.

Shelley Nahr for The Nation overcame my better judgment and persuaded me to go to Auckland this morning to discuss that brief. And to my relief Duncan Garner stuck to it. I cannot tell whether it was entertaining because the topic is too interesting for me to be objective, but  think he did an excellent job in getting balanced comment from Rodney Hide, Colin Craig of the Conservative Party and of course, me.

Right to the end  I waited for Duncan to abandon the brief and subject me, or us, to what John Campbell did to John Key last evening. Campbell traded on Key's endless courtesy with dopey questions in pursuit of an absurd conspiracy theory. Even if his theory had been correct, it would be a yawn, except to those for whom anti-Americanism is mother's milk.

And why do I say that this instalment of The Nation "gives way to the right". Because it added momentum to that part of the right occupied by Colin Craig's Conservatives. Colin announced his availability for an Epsom by-election.

And because Rachel Smalley did such a good job in eliciting views from Colin James and then Wellington's 'son of Roger Kerr' – the New Zealand Initiative's new director, polymath German/Brit/Aus think tank whiz  Oliver Hartwich, without the sneer that John Campbell seems unable to avoid in interviews with people from the other side of his bi-polar world.

I said in Jim Mora's show on National Radio this afternoon that Wellington's  Moa Point sewage treatment plant uses the energy equivalent of 6000 barrels of oil per day. A producer raised his eyebrows and later asked if I meant litre, or gallons. 

I've now lost confidence in my memory. I recall the engineer telling the story, and his reference to barrels. But he may have given the 6000 figure as an equivalent.  I must follow up to get the right figure.

The current operators, United Water, should be able to clarify on Monday, if no one else does before that.  The process captures the solids for landfill disposal, and treats the remaining liquid with UV light before it is discharged to Cook Strait. It is energy intensive, but cannot possibly use 6000 barrels of oil equivalent.

A month ago I predicted a win for the Hon Judith Collins in her law-suit over the claim that she or her office had leaked ACC information.

Catching up on several week's papers I thought of how sick Messrs Mallard & Co must have felt on seeing Phil Kitchin's latest report on the ACC/Pullar affair.  Their source might seem a less reliable witness for pleading justification in light of at least one misleading ACC internal report.  Phil is such a good journalist I read his report as a fair indication of ACC scrum twisting. Where there is some there is usually more.

Trevor Mallard could be getting advice right now to settle this, even if it involves a complete and abject apology and withdrawal. I hope the Minister makes them pay all her costs, plus some, to cover the risk she took, plus some more against RNZ for its low-grade coverage of the Mallard allegations without balancing comment.

Great to see Mayor Celia reported without mockery in this DomPost report, saying her new electric assisted bicycle is "about saving that time and looking slightly more cool".

I love the way she's sticks it to the superior types embarassed by having someone "representing them", whose committment to her values goes as far as biking when in fact it's uncool, and despite the blandishments of a chauffered car.

Sue Moroney MP and the Labour Party must be over the moon. Her Bill to extend paid parental leave has had more publicity already than they could have dreamed.

It has no show of passing without Government support, as she would know, yet it has been reported widely as if it could proceed over the objections of the Government.  Without that spurious possibility it would have had no newsworthiness.

Standing Orders are clear. A money bill (which would commit government money) can be vetoed by the Minister of Finance.

"The House will not pass a bill, amendment or motion that the government certifies it does not concur in because, in its view, the bill, amendment or motion would have more than a minor impact on the government’s fiscal aggregates if it became law"

The Bill is, nevertheless the kind of measure that works politically, even if it is bad for the economy, and bad for the women of child bearing age who become more susceptible to the covert discrimination by which employers protect themselves from unequally shared social costs. The accumulation of such feel-good measures has transformed Western democracies over two generations from world economic powerhouses to parasites on the energy and capital forming sacrifice of poorer people.

Greece is just the most obvious case. It is a poster example of what happens when cynical politicians pander to a nation of greedy, dishonest, whining bludgers. The honest toilers pay the price along with those who've ruined them.

What a pity Labour has not put up a bill to reform something they campaigned on last election, where the embarrrassment of the financial veto would mean more politically. They could, for example, lodge bills to push out the pension age, or to impose capital gains tax. If they got a majority to support those, consider the political impact of forcing the government to exercise the veto to protect John Key from doing what he has already admitted to be the right thing for the economy.

I'm sick of hearing that thngs are "sub judice". People too often refuse to answer questions because something has gone to court.

I think it  is just a way to parry critical scrutiny, for courts and judges as well as the parties using the excuse. Those using it have the smug feeling of playing a joker. Given the inexcusable delays in courts it can mean  there is ill-informed or warped public discussion of issues until long past the time when the discussion might be useful. People  whose main punishment should be universal disgrace may escape exposure until years later when it is all old news.

 I think the lawyers for the Lombard defendants should have been free to do much more publicly for their clients. All kinds of uncorrected false allegations ran unchallenged. Public reputations were lost. Meanwhile the courts wasted our $millions crying over the spilt milk of another property investment doomed from the moment the GFC ended the land development boom. 

There was no dishonesty, no lack of diligence, no intent to deceive. Yet only the court knew that until the very end. The defendants  were left helpless in public, seemingly gagged and bound in the stocks of media and blog commentary. It seems that no one felt free to fight accusations that the defendants were crooks and fools until the verdict. 

What possible purpose is served by rules or even conventions that leave them without help from their lawyers in public and without being free to say anything directly to correct the nonsense filling the media vacuum?.

 I had little time for Sir Douglas as a politician. But I can't stand unfairness and hypocrisy. And I know company and securities law. So when the media told me they could not get others involved to respond I agreed to speak . I did not know that the Hon Bill Jeffries was prepared to speak to TV 1 after the sentencing. He did well, and  Jehan Casinader and TV 1 deserve great credit for letting him put his side without snide editing and trick shots to fit the villain persona that had been created for him.

But how sad that he had to wait till years after he was charged. Perhaps the lawyers were gagged by some absurd rule.  Why on earth would ‘sub judice’ require silence on matters before a court sitting without an impressionable jury? Are the judges afraid they will be adversely influenced by what is said outside court? Or is ‘sub judice’ just a way to minimise critical scrutiny.

If court processes are doing their job, given the time they take, how could the careful nature of court presentations not outweigh (and inform and correct) any misleading aspect of the necessarily abbreviated material in the media?

It is time the judges had a good hard look at this preciousness. The issues are similar to those around name suppression and other derogations from the principles of open justice (being done and being seen to be done). When the blogosphere can speculate freely, and the fact of arrest or prosecution is likely to be known to all close associates, what fairness or other purpose is served by making sure the public generally cannot learn the facts from those who know them best – the parties and their lawyers.

Two simple rights are being trampled by the Courts – the right  of free speech (which is our right to know) and the right of everyone to defend themselves. .

If I were the Hon Trevor Mallard I'd eat humble pie now to extract myself from the hole of  implying that the Hon Judith Collins was complicit in publicising the ACC correspondence of  Bronwyn Pullar.

The Minister plans to sue and fund it herself. She will be entitled to pocket the winnings.

Normally Court serves only the lawyers but for a good lawyer it can be worth being a plaintiff. Richard Prebble made real money punishing some who defamed him. Such plaintiffs serve the public interest in upholding the integrity of public debate. If there is no sanction for lying in the exercise of free speech, a kind of Gresham's law may prevail. The person determined not to lie may be destroyed by the colour and effectiveness of ever bigger lies.

And the National Party has already gained from Judith Collins' steadiness under fire. Her determination has helped knocked the ACC claim to irrelevance. Pollling suggests that the public find it as boring as I do.

Most New Zealanders reason instinctively that anyone sucking off "the system"  forfeits their right to privacy, at least in respects relevant to any complaints about the system's fairness to them.

An unfairness complainer going public should have to accept that the rest of us are entitled to all the information necessary to judge the unfairness accusation in context.

Tomorrow is the sad sentencing hearing for the Lombard directors. They may appeal but even success would not undo much of their disgrace. I've already explained here and here why criminal convictions for men who are honest are so damaging to the law.

Whatever the judge does is bound to disappoint and enrage investors who have now been given the wrong message that they have criminality to blame for the almost inevitable losses to many of them. And it will refresh the shivers that have rightly been steering our businesspeople and their opportunities far away from public listing.

The proper sanctions for poor judgment and bad timing and carelessness in business should be the natural damage to your reputation plus civil liability to compensate if  a loss is connected to breach of a relevant duty. It is disastrous for criminal law to ruin its own status by branding with the label 'convict'  in the absence of any evidence of conscious wrongdoing.

I do not know if any of the men concerned are members of the IOD (or any other club for honourable people). Even if they are not, the IOD and any such clubs could help to frame the proceedings in a fair light, if they announced that they would not automatically ask them to resign on sentencing BECAUSE THESE CONVICTIONS ARE NO EVIDENCE OF BAD CHARACTER OR CRIMINALITY IN ANY ORDINARY SENSE OF THAT WORD.

As Dobson J said on conviction "the law has created criminal liability for what may be no more than a material misjudgement "..

As a member of the Council of the IOD years ago, I pressed for us to make our claimed standards real, by expelling members who were found to be unethical, without delay. I do not know if they still try. They may consider it desirable, given their particular role to extend expulsion to directors who are found to be foolish.

But they would do all their members and the law a service with a statement to distinguish clearly between wickedness and carelessness or misjudgment.  

I will ask a Club of which I am share membership with at least one of the defendants who I know to be honourable, to make this distinction clear.