David Bain fights back.

There had been a building anxiety over the situation that David found himself in as the result of the neutral "Judge Judy' deliberating over his future hand in hand with the two primary groups who sent him to prison for 13 years after the deliberate act of 'an actual Misscarriage of Justice.' While David was the applicant in a bid for compensation for his years in prison, the Minister for all intents treated him as if she were Queen and he was held in the Tower of London while she devised ways to avoid paying him for his mistreatment, aided of course by the perpetrators of that mistreatment the police and The Crown. While the Minister sought a 'peer' review of the Binnie report that David was Innocent on the Balance of Probabilities she kept everybody in the dark apart from both the Crown and police,later she would be seen to have worked with them whilst excluding the applicant.

Contrast that situation with Ian Binnie's way of going about his work, all information he received he copied to the other parties having  taken advice from the former Minister of Justice that the Crown were also to be treated as a party to the application from David Bain. He acted with absolute fairness and impartiality, while the Minister who would soon attack his report publicly, after looking to extinguish it's merit privately, acted absolutely without fairness and impartiality. When her 'dark' deeds were finally exposed not only did she attack Binne but she also attacked David Bain in an odd sort of 'motherly' role, expressing that he might not
'like' things in a report that said he was innocent - what would David not like about having been found not innocent on the BOP - to answer that one would have to go to a very dark place indeed - the mind of the Minister of Justice, the person tasked with overseeing one of the most important Government portfolios: the fair administration of Justice.

A Minister who had in previous months looked to have taken a firm grip on the an important portfolio suddenly had become the 'attack dog' for the police and Crown and there was no longer any 'air' of neutrality, only of venom. So for some watchers like myself there seem to be a point raised, the distinction of how long David Bain would stand cap in hand before his 'neutral' tormentor. It appeared even among those with no view of the Bain case, ambivalence to it and even those that thought David guilty that there was disquiet about the spectacle of a Minister predicting long delays in David's applications and speaking to he, and his support team only through the media, that unfairness was at work. What was he to do?

Most people know the point that is reached when a person, having had enough of feeling of being treated badly or unfairly that there dignity is offended or they simply lose their cool and say something as relatively benign as 'stick it up your jumper' or in the case of more seasoned veterans up another more intimate place. That point had long since arrived in my opinion, I'd say around last November or December, perhaps even 2009, but of course no legal remedy, particularly as one as 'complex' as questioning the unbridled use of power against a citizen stripped of their normal rights can happen overnight. I've written else where, and much earlier here on this blog of my resistance to a man or woman damaged by the state, or state powers, in some way to have to go to the Crown head bowed seeking some redress. It seems to me to completely against the kiwi instinct of fairness and is the reason I've always supported the case of Susan Couch against Corrections that was finally settled last year. Why I, like others, still remain disturbed about the Crewe case, the Ellis case, Watson case, because all these people damaged by the state get reduced to fighting an immovable beast while having their hands tied behind their backs. And that immovable beast is the people's own government, just like Judith Collins is the political head of a Justice system that is set in place to ultimately serve and protect those I mention above, but which in fact offers them pity and excuses while fighting them tooth and nail to prevent them receiving redress from the very party that caused immeasurable damage in their lives. Anybody who has had family fight for NZ in wars would harbour some reserve that one of the reasons their family members fought was to see fairness remain strong in our own homelands, fought that that the freedoms of their descendants would be enhanced and improved as a just society became more concerned about rights and the treatment of it's citizens.

Perhaps that is going somewhat too far in ideology - something I will let any readers consider. But in the meantime, as I hope it sinks into other kiwi's minds, we have seen David Bain knocked down by the Minister charged with his fair and just treatment, she has bullied threatened and cautioned him in pubic, spoken about her powers to 'decide' on his future, obviously feeling that her 'powers' were untouchable and able to be used in any way that she decided - because nobody would tell her 'the temporary King or Queen' what to do, or even dare to question her - well on Wednesday David did exactly that, and has arrived where I thought he should have been 4 years ago, not bowing to some 'prerogative cabinet power' but in the Courts were all men and women have the right to go for Justice.