How many inquiries do we need?

It's been portrayed as an over-indulgence in inquisition and so it could be for a new coalition Government said to have initiated more than 70 reports or inquiries in just over five months.

But it's not so much the number that matters, for given late 21st and late 20th century Government propensity for not really divulging the whole truth and nothing but the truth prior to election time it would be a dereliction of duty not to be asking a truckload of questions.

Where it falls down, a bit, is that there's a certain amount of disconnection, as highlighted when it was revealed at least three Family Court judges had been subjected to protests outside their homes, about matters inside their jurisdiction.

Few will go with that form of attack, but it raised a debate, and Labour MP and Minister of Justice Andrew Little, while saying there were more proper channels through which the protesters could work, announced the umpteenth review of family courts.

This is, however, a bit of doubling-up, for in February Labour leader and Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Minister for Children and New Zealand First MP Tracey Martin announced there will be a Royal Commission of Inquiry into historical abuse of children in state care.

There is a link. No child in New Zealand ends up in state care without the Family Court's consent, and since April last year we have had a regime intent on creating more of them, not less.

The Government could save itself a bit of data usage if it somehow merged the two inquisitorial concepts and widened the brief to suss all of the issues which are so central to the survival of the judicial payroll, namely so-called domestic violence, or more to the point the breakdowns which fuel it and all that follows from it.

Violence is the ultimate symbol of frustration, the degree of which is often relevant to whether those so disaffected are being listened to when they need to be heard — the plaint of those protesting earlier this week.

Out of it we might get a look at cause, ahead of effect, and umpteen inquiries for the price of one.