Paul Holmes: None too mighty to be above judgment

Photo / Herald on Sunday

The Green MP David Clendon had a good week. His private member's bill demanding that judges declare their pecuniary interests was drawn in the ballot.

The idea came up this week in the snap debate about the resignation from the Supreme Court of Justice Bill Wilson. Frankly, I'm amazed we don't have such a requirement to declare financial interests already.

I wouldn't have such a requirement for District Court judges, nor would I suggest that judges of, say, the Family Court were so required. It is in the High Court, the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court that the real power resides and where the real potential for injustice exists.

That's where judges should have to be quite open about who they're in business with, to the tune of how much and so forth. That whole Bill Wilson affair didn't turn up anything crooked but it did show how tight that little judicial circle of mates was.

And again, while nothing necessarily crooked was exposed, the Supreme Court did itself no favours letting the stink of the affair hang over it for so long. The court demonstrated it was impossibly slow and possibly incompetent in the protection of its image and credibility.

They have immense power, those judges, so they must be above reproach if they want the right to pass judgment on the rest of us. In any case, surely we have a right to know something about those who presume to judge us?

Wilson should have excused himself in the case he judged at the Court of Appeal in 2007, in which he found for the client of the man he was in business with. I mean, for God's sake, ask yourself.

And, this week, Charles Chauvel, who should know better, was praising Wilson to the hilt. The fact is, Wilson wasn't very bright on that occasion.

Do these people get so used to power, prestige, privilege and position that they start to consider themselves above being considered dodgy? Is that what happens? Do they get duchessed by their own glory?

Well, Trevor de Cleene once told me that he told a Chief Justice when he was whingeing on about something: "You might be the Chief Justice but, in the end, we all get into our pants one leg at a time."

Meaning, I suppose, that we all look silly at least once a day.

I've spent much of the week wondering how a woman leaves a kid outside McDonald's in Otara and doesn't come back. This was a shocking story.

The mother should probably not get the child back and I see this seems to be the official view as well, for now at least. That seems obvious. The kid is not wanted.

I could have a guess at the problem there and the cause of the complete lack of personal responsibility, but never mind. I see there has been contact between the mother and state agencies on the matter of her children on other occasions. Well, of course there has.

JOHN KEY has laid it on the Japanese. You're welcome to join the Trans Pacific Partnership "but only on our terms".

He didn't mean New Zealand's terms but the terms by which the other Pacific rim countries are engaged, specifically with the inclusion of agriculture in any trade deal.

The Japanese approach reform at a glacial pace but the Japanese Government is at last indicating it might look at the abandonment of agricultural tariffs.

This is the way in which we may all get a free trade deal with the United States and Hillary Clinton made it fairly clear last weekend that that is the way the United States is going.

New Zealand was one of the pioneers in the TPP agreement, with Brunei and Singapore. Now, Australia, Malaysia, Peru and Vietnam want to join.

And so, it was announced this week, does Taiwan. As far as the US goes, will it agree to include agriculture? That's the big question. The TPP should stick to its guns.

ANYWAY, I passed the five-month mark this week. No cigarettes for more than five months. I'm very proud. Deborah and I did it together.

I didn't think I could do it after smoking for more than 40 years. It wasn't just turning 60 and deciding that enough was enough. It was also the price.

Raising the price this year did the trick. When we worked out what it was costing us a week to buy cigarettes we were appalled.

Every now and then I get the urge. Not often. Now I pity the people standing outside the buildings. But you can't let yourself get too holier than thou or you might end up on the bench of the Supreme Court. And the stink really is bad, isn't it? I really notice it when someone who's just had a cigarette gets into the car with me.

Trouble is, the weight has piled on. At one point, I found myself eating anything up to a packet of chocolate biscuits a day.

It was nothing to sit round in the evening and devour six or eight Mint Treats at a time. Or macaroons. I thought I was getting away with it and then, suddenly, one day, I couldn't get into any of my trousers.

For This is Your Life recently, I had to rush back to Auckland to acquire a large suit that would accommodate the Michelin Man.

Last weekend, I fished out a pair of nice trousers I bought about three months ago and the gap between the button and the buttonhole at the top of the trousers must have been about six inches. I was mortified.

So, it's back to the boring salads and the long walks. A friend of mine lost a lot of weight some years back. I hadn't seen him for awhile and he looked very svelte. I asked him how he'd done it. He said he did not eat anything he hadn't prepared at home.

The doctor weighed me the other day. I'm 11kg heavier than when I did Dancing With the Stars. It could be terribly depressing if one let it.