LawFuel.com – LawFuel’s ‘Hot Files’ has a report from a correspondent on the latest Government appointment, the new Solicitor General. Our Lowry Bay Observer has unkindly suggested that New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark has bolstered her legal team with the appointment of the new Solicitor General, Dr David Collins QC, a sidekick of the PM’s they say. Certainly the good doctor has issued protestations and declared his utter professionalism and impartiality.
The whole issue of patronage and legal protectionism has taken on a greater force under the country’s latest legal imbroglio, this time the whole ‘Koha-ruption’ scandal involving culturally-approved cash “donations” to brown MPs. Or one, anyway.
The good doctor will no doubt deftly advise his way through any involvement his office may have in such affairs. And after the ‘Dominion-Post’s’ fawning story this weekend on the doctor (“one of the World’s best medical legal minds” – oh, dear) he must be widening the new office door to fit in his head.
The doctor’s also been having the book(s) thrown at him. Legal website www.caseload.co.nz has had a go about his role advising the author of a tale of alleged sexual abuse, the text of which the author claims the doctor authorised and vetted, while the National Business Review is querying his writing of a chapter on welfarism in another text buried in the doctor’s academic past. Given that the doctor evidently worked as a Labour Party researcher, what could one expect? And who cares? Just as who cares if the doctor has hiked and mountain-climbed with New Zealand’s leader, Helen Clark? Does this reflect adversely on his ability to do the job given to him by the Labour Government. Surely not.
Our Lowry Bay Observer also notes that the doctor’s carefully calibrated legal career has been such that he even positioned himself opposite former Chief Justice Sir Thomas Eichelbaum in the tony suburb, (you can imagine the waves from the respective rose gardens, “Hello, Sir Tom”).
Our Observer notes that it’s a question of ‘Guess Who’s Coming for Dinner’, with the such close friends as Labour MP Judith Tizard and close friend of the PM negotiating her way past the ‘Good Life’ Volvo to the front door, welcomed in by the doting Teresa. But, he’s allowed his friends. Even politicians. There’s no doubting the doctor will remain impartial and objective, putting his great medical mind to work on surgically removing the Government from any heart-stopping moments, just as any professional legal figure might be expected to do in this little South Pacific near-republic.
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