Corrupt Swindling Lawyers

Who would have thought that New Zealand had corrupt swindling lawyers. Especially after the usual claptrap from transparency international, the to policy wonks who sit in corporate luxury in Wellington and declare New Zealand to be corruption free.

Yet here we have the major New Zealand daily in their biggest paper of the week, the Saturday edition with the front page headlines telling us we have perhaps 200 corrupt lawyers swindling the legal aid system.

Dame Margaret Bazley must be commended because in saying that she is taking on the establishment. As Corporal Jones says “they won’t like it up them sir”. But the Herald article is but the tip of the iceberg.

Cactus Kate alerts us to NBR subscriber content of a Judge who was in debt to a QC who unsurprisingly kept on winning cases brought before him. The Judge owed the QC nearly a quarter of a million dollars. Essentially that Judge was bought and paid for. I hope he enjoys his retirement for he should be sacked immediately.

This of course will now play out again in the courts no doubt and in the various law societies round the country and I’ll tell you something right now for free, name suppression will be extensively used because these folk are establishment and the system will protect their own.

Dame Margaret Bazley though will have only touched the tip of the iceberg. If she thinks there are corrupt lawyers rorting the legal aid system there is a much larger problem looming where the large amounts of cash in the drug trade could literally buy someone a Judge, all the QC’s and even the jury. If there is corruption in the Manukau District court and corruption in the QC’s chambers you may be sure that there is corruption all the way in between.

This is the tipping point. We have had an MP jailed for corruption, now we have a Judge, A QC and hundreds of lawyers being called corrupt. I think that Transparency International can safely be ignored and we must face that New Zealand has become corrupt and it has slowly crept up on us like a thief in the night.

We MUST have an Independent Commission against Corruption and really rather urgently. no need to reinvent the wheel either, simply copy the Australian version.