Fran O'Sullivan: How would Silvia have run the Field debacle?

What sort of inquiry would Dame Silvia Cartwright have run into the Taito Phillip Field affair in the days when she was a fearless crusading judge?

I'd like to think she asks herself this as she prepares for the next job in her stellar career.

Would Dame Silvia have called the Prime Minister up and said: "Now look, Helen, I really do think this is a step too far.

"How can I talk about New Zealand's appalling violence levels, the gulf between our pristine international image and what really goes on here when your Government operates a two-tier justice system?

"You should show some leadership, old girl.

"Pick up on Noel Ingram's rather delicate findings and either appoint an experienced commissioner like me to finish the job, or throw it to the New Zealand police who are unlikely to investigate unless it has your imprimatur.

"Power's not worth presiding over a cover-up. You of all people should know that.

"You can't just say 'move on' and expect the people not to see through you."

There was praise by the bucketful in the past couple of weeks about the elegant Dame Silvia's record as our effective head of state, a role she has occupied as New Zealand's second female Governor-General.

She's off now to preside over a War Crimes Tribunal in Cambodia - a position she achieved after a strong New Zealand lobbying campaign on her behalf - where she will no doubt reclaim the previous persona she wore so proudly and deservedly at the cervical cancer inquiry involving National Women's Hospital, her springboard for fame.

Dame Silvia's parting salvo over New Zealand's level of violence is portrayed as a rather "out there" step for a person in her position.

But it's also from someone about to join the departure lounge.

"Silvia" would have pushed harder for an appropriate response at official level and stayed around to do the job.

The spectre of the Greens and Labour conniving to shut down National's attempt to ensure some open justice for the Thai nationals who worked for Field surely deserved a parting comment.

Is there not something seriously astray when political parties, particularly the governing party, combine to shut down an open inquiry into whether Field used his position for pecuniary gain by ripping off disadvantaged Thai nationals, who have no one to speak for them as he helped them to gain immigration approvals to enter New Zealand?

Does Dame Silvia not think it is time to shed light on the gap between New Zealand's public image overseas as a corruption-free country and the reputation this country might gain over time if scandals like the Field affair are shut down for the convenience of the reigning political party rather than investigated?

Because that is exactly the reputation that New Zealand will begin to enjoy if some rigour is not introduced into the system.

Already we have the abysmal record of the police in deciding not to lay charges against the Labour Party and the Prime Minister's chief of staff over the alleged plundering of Clark's Parliamentary Leaders Budget to top-up the party's election funds.

The police investigation found a case to answer, but decided on lame grounds not to pursue the action because of the potential constitutional fallout.

Dame Silvia the Governor-General might well argue she was powerless to hold the police to account; that her job was in effect simply cosmetic.

The Silvia of her earlier days would have known that but may have disregarded the cosmetics and found a way to use her office to hold power to account.

She would have simply adopted that as her constitutional right.

The salient point about the Field affair is that it is not simply a parliamentary matter, nor even one of political process as is now being portrayed.

When the police, the Labour Department, the immigration authorities also say they will not act in this case unless they have a written complaint from the affected Thai nationals - rather than taking their lead from Ingram's findings - there is something fundamentally astray.

Just ask Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters.

Peters is now typecast as a political poodle for accepting Helen Clark's baubles of power in return for supporting her Labour minority Government.

He is certainly the butt of jokes over who came off worse when he was apparently bitten by a spider in Malaysia, a public predicament that he would never have allowed himself to be trapped into in the days before he took himself so seriously.

In his glory days Peters sure knew how to run a scandal, campaigning for years to get a full-scale commission of inquiry into the Wine Box tax dodging affair.

The Winston of old, like Silvia, would not have been troubled by the fact that there are no big-name scalps to bring down.

He would have sailed forth and to hell with the consequences to ensure justice was done. Surely he, too, must sometimes wonder if the baubles of office just aren't worth the price.