Dialogue: When the silent majority decided to have a word

By PATRICK GOWER in the Waikato

It was busy outside the Hamilton District Court last Friday morning. But there were no patient defendants, concerned clusters of friends and family, or even lonely lawyers stealing puffs from cigarettes in the sunshine while they waited for the wheels of justice to make yet another slow turn.

Instead, the concrete steps had become a makeshift theatre for the Mark Middleton Show.

"I've never protested before in my life," said one 54-year-old, acting as though he had never so much as even complained about having to do the dishes, "but now I feel strongly enough."

Sandal-wearing liberals of yesteryear they were not. This bunch was more likely to wear their sandals with socks, thank you very much.

In 1981 they would have been in the stand at Hamilton's Rugby Park rather than beyond the barbwire with C.K. Stead and company keeping the Springboks in their changing shed.

They were not so much a bunch of hardy do-gooders, they were hardened moaners enjoying a bit of verbal leeway normally not afforded on the talkback airwaves.

"New Zealand should be like Singapore," said another. "If you steal, they cut off your hand."

But what the vanguard of Middleton's Waikato cronies lacked in realism and pragmatism they made up for in emotion and angst. They were passionate about truth in sentencing, but angry that Middleton could face time behind bars. They were also white, overwhelmingly middle-class - and politicised.

"Mark Middleton should be the Minister for Justice," read one placard.

This would no doubt have disappointed National frontbencher Bob Simcock - Opposition MPs gravitate to angry middle-class crowds like bees to a honey pot - who probably would have preferred to see his own name on such a banner.

But all politicians were the enemy to this angry bunch. None of them listens, you see. So even the wholly supportive Mr Simcock had to cop some of their sting before they could be ushered towards the more suitable target of Labour MP Martin Gallagher's nearby office.

If there's one thing better than haranguing a politician, it is haranguing a politician who is in power. So all 100 or so protesters formed an angry mob and charged around the block, where, lo and behold, Mr Gallagher was ready and waiting next to a poster-sized portrait of himself taken 10 years earlier.

After more bluster, tears from some with murdered loved ones and further emotion-ridden angst, they were assured that Mr Gallagher had voted for the tougher-sentencing referendum as an individual at the last election and, yes, of course he would be taking their petition to Parliament.

"Ninety-two per cent can't be wrong," said someone, referring to the outcome of the tougher-sentencing referendum. "So it's about time they did something."

But a day's work is never over and, despite getting the politicians to finally stand up and take notice, there was still the prospect that the king of vigilante crusaders could be knocked off his pedestal and into a prison cell by another liberal judge up in the Big Smoke.

Yet with no news and no time to wait, they decided the petition and protest were enough for one day and they disbanded before they had heard of Middleton's fate.

Thanks to car radios and suspended sentences - no, that means you don't go to jail - they would soon have found out that Middleton was walking as free as a violent criminal on parole.

So there it was: not even two hours of people power and direct action in little old Hamilton helped this along, so it was worth going home early. Besides, 92 per cent can't be wrong, can they? Well, maybe, but who wants to go there on a day of such victory?

Back in Hamilton's courtroom No 2, the case of a chronic fines-defaulter with a list of traffic offences as long as your arm was stood down while he found himself a duty solicitor.

"Its like pissing against the wind," muttered a court official as the court stopped for its mid-morning tea-break.

And it was business as usual outside the Hamilton District Court again.