Garth George: Plans to choose top judges give me the heebie-jeebies

COMMENT

The snapshot of New Zealand life provided by the Herald on Tuesday was not only rather ugly, it was a bit scary. It concentrated, of course, on the abolition of appeals to the Privy Council and the setting up of an indigenous New Zealand Supreme Court.

And, as this newspaper quite rightly pointed out, it is not cutting ties with the Privy Council that really matters, it's the selection process and the composition of the new court of final appeal.

The thought of the judges of our highest court being chosen by Attorney-General Margaret Wilson, Chief Justice Sian Elias, the Solicitor-General, Terence Arnold, QC, whose impartiality is in question, and ex-Anglican prelate and Labour Party camp-follower Paul Reeves, gives me the heebie-jeebies.

It doesn't help that Margaret Wilson is a politician who is so popular with the people that she scored a mere 6783 votes out of 32,726 cast in Tauranga last year, and who owes her position in Parliament to nothing more than being a member of the Labour Party's academic old girls' network.

I hesitate to suggest that we appoint our top judges the way the Americans do - through a piercing personal and professional grilling by a congressional (in our case, parliamentary) committee - for that would simply provide another platform for political point-scoring, which is about all our politicians these days are good at.

So much thought needs to be given as to how we go about appointing these paragons of jurisprudence so that we all have faith in the ultimate court, like we used to have in the judiciary at large, which was universally respected, even by the crims the judges put in the slammer.

I have no sympathy with those ex-judges and lawyers who bleat that the controversy surrounding the Supreme Court Bill (now Act) has been damaging the judiciary. It was already damaged, many of its members seen as inconstant reeds waving in the winds of political correctness and infected with a guilt-ridden racial bias.

But enough of that. What about the idea of placing tolls not just on new roads but some of our existing ones, too - the ones we've all paid for a hundred times over in income taxes and all the other taxes, duties, levies and charges imposed on the long-suffering motorist? Pull that one and it'll be time to man the barricades.

Then there's the three little scrubbers who not only deliberately defrauded a popular upmarket restaurant of hundreds of dollars worth of food and booze but dropped the management in it to the tune of some $100,000 - and got off scot free, apparently because daddy paid up, if somewhat gracelessly.

I go along with the letter-writer who suggested the underage trio should be made to wash every utensil, dish, piece of cutlery and glass used in the restaurant every night for two weeks. Trouble is, going on what we know of them and their families, the washing would all have to be done over again by machine.

The one bright light in Tuesday's paper - apart from Scott Dixon's magnificent IndyCar championship victory - was Michael King's suggestion that Waitangi Day be scrapped as our national day and some other day substituted.

If his suggestion gains traction, the $60,000 the Prime Minister slipped him a week or so ago will be money well spent.

Air New Zealand announced it was getting tough on baggage limits in advance of its decision to shed 1500 staff. That simply confirms a decision I made months ago never again to fly Air New Zealand, domestic or international.

I value my life too highly to entrust it to a cut-price, low (or no) service, penny-pinching outfit which, if it is yet again cutting staff, must be questionable in the areas of training, maintenance and servicing. I wonder why the firm's head of engineering services suddenly wasn't there any more.

Then there's the ubiquitous argument about genetic modification, and I doubt that we'll ever see the end of it. I remain ambivalent - there are good arguments for and against - and I am insufficiently interested to take a stand. Pressed, I would, I think, say that it's probably better to wait.

What I do know about the whole GM affair is that most of those who oppose it wouldn't recognise a gene if it bit them on the nose; and most of those who support it are talking through their pockets.

But the piece de resistance on Tuesday was right at the back - the Perspectives item on the latest "splat" movie, a piece of excrement called Kill Bill, in which vengeful women do all the killing and men are portrayed as "oafish, Neanderthal rapists" who are all "plump and unlovely".

Writes Terence Blacker, of the Independent: "A recurrent image of Kill Bill is that of a female face flecked with blood, the eyes cold but slightly amused, before revenge is exacted."

I wonder if Prime Minister Helen Clark, Governor-General Dame Silvia Cartwright, Attorney-General Wilson and Chief Justice Elias will make up a party to go along and see it.