Mike's Minute: Winston tells it like it is on courts

First, a quick question on the Oxford Union.

We thought it was a thing when David Lange turned up all those years ago, but since then Willie Jackson, David Seymour and now Winston Peters have appeared.

So does that diminish its exclusiveness?

Anyway here's what Winston Peters argued - that courts here undermine democracy. God bless that man and may he spread that message far and wide.

Just last week's Marine and Coastal Amendment Bill is your latest and classic example.

We had a law that came in in 2011. Some people didn’t like it, and you're allowed to not like laws. But hijacking democracy by trying your luck in interventionist courts is not helpful to a country looking for a bit of peace and harmony.

Courts are good for a bunch of stuff; deciding either by judge or jury whether Mr Pollock was in the library with the candlestick i.e crime.

They're good for deciding whether another judge erred in an initial finding i.e appeals.

They're good for deciding whether there is a gap in law and, if there is, how that gap could be filled i.e the Supreme Court.  

What they're not good at, although I'm sure given their operations of late they would argue otherwise, is taking an already established law and upending it because they  believe they are superior to the ultimate court, which of course is the Parliament.

And the Parliament is the ultimate court because the group of lawmakers are put there by us, the voter.

Peters, a lawyer himself of course, is doing a great service on our behalf because too many people, including people in the Parliament, are afraid to calls things out when they need calling out.

They were afraid to call out the Reserve Bank when it butchered the economy, afraid to call out the Speaker when he failed to properly deal with the clowns in the house and afraid to call out judges at places like the Waitangi Tribunal when they very clearly overstep their mandate and look increasingly like little more than troublemakers.

Winston Peters - a good foreign minister and good at telling it like it is.

Buy the man a beer.

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