Here, take my freedom.

I could be black or white, a mixture, most probably poor, likely to have been in trouble before, a less than desirable education, a quality of submission or hostility in the face of authority and I could be judged by an elite. Judged by one of 268 Judges now serving in NZ Courts, of whom only 20 identify themselves as Maori, 2 as Pacific Islanders, 1 Asian and 1 Indian. Those judges age averages around 58 years, few of them will have the full gambit of life time experiences that are brought together by a jury of peers.

In reality some of those Judges will be ground down to complacency by seeing so many faces like mine or yours so many times, that they reach a conception of you or I by virtue of our names I before we even enter the Court. When they drive to work or go to social gatherings they don't see the streets where you or I might live, they most likely will be unable to appreciate more that superficially any culture other than their own. Quite naturally, they live in an elite world, they could be tired, unwilling to sway from the path of conservatism which has for their whole life comforted them. There will be few among them that are sceptical of all evidence they hear or who tend not to question the construction of the cases they are likely to hear, not because of any reason other than their conservatism of their months, years of seeing the same sort of people appearing before them day and day out, separated only by name and on occasion a case out of the ordinary. Almost universally they will favour, even with consciousness, the authority that has brought the charges because they are part of that authority.

These are the same people our monocratic Minister Of Justice wants to hear more trials by Judge alone because he says it will free up to 16,000 hours of court time each year. He doesn't see the need for a wharfie to be judged by other blue collar workers, professionals, or those that have been through university and set course on another style of life, nor shopkeepers, taxi drivers or somebody like the woman or man next door. But this was the very need according to traditional law, the drawing together of life experiences to test the guilt or innocence of an accused, something which began because there was recognised dissatisfaction and potential bias by the former model by which the King himself, or his firmly controlled appointee, judged the King's enemies or those that were alleged to have transgressed the civil or criminal codes, or indeed might have their property desired by the King himself or a favourite ally.

Simon Power, who seems intent on knee-jerking his way out of office, has heartily failed to recognise that our existing system has elements of corruption, that the country has a recent history of miscarriage of justices - some which continue and he instead looks at how money might be saved. The clear message remains however, miscarriages of justices would readily consume the hours Power indicates would be saved. MOJs are extremely expensive. And so we have a Minister who right at the moment has at least 2 cases of mojs on his desk and who probably prevaricates with 1 eye on the election and the other on trying to recover his reputation damaged both by his involvement with The Sensible Sentencing Trust and for throwing out a centuries old law because of a particular case in which the law worked.

So he tinkers. Much like a young man with a car, more interested in it's cosmetic appearance than it's performance. Mr Power under his watch has a system that poorly, and without any appropriate appreciation that time is off the essence, is failing to recognise and remedy mojs. Surely, having a robust court and review system is more important than trying to take away a citizens rights to be tried, as near as possible by a jury of his peers, than by an elite who is fed by the same hand as those that prosecute? Simon Power is a product of the same system of those to whom he wishes to give more power over the masses from where, in the majority, Judges do not originate from. While agreeing that Power has considerably less experience than any of the 268 Judges doesn't discharge him from his myopic view that sees him avoiding creating laws establishing a right for compensation, and grimly holding to another law that is equally as undemocratic as that which he now trys to pass - The Royal Prerogative for Mercy.

Simon Power has proven that he sees a world where an elite have absolute power, he is centuries out of his time. He has no compassion, his speech and manner are robotic, he is difficult to read in that he seems to possess no real characteristics of personality that are not stitched up in his stifled view of the world and his own importance. Were it but now for the wise words of Peter Mahon to observe the importance of Justice and pursuit of the truth rather than of a man who willingly listens to the loudest mob. The real work is before this Minister but he chooses to ignore it. He should be intent on creating a fairer, self-analysing Judiciary, arm them with the vision of our current Youth Court Judge, make available sentences that have initiatives that can work, recognise the people and lift all to the same level not raise further those already privileged.