Winston Peters and David McNee.

Winston Peters should quit politics and become an investigator if he wants to find out the "truth" in matters of politics. He`s got a week off to think about it now that he`s been grounded. He may get somewhere instead of asking incompetent ministers questions that they refuse to answer sufficiently. On the other hand, Police Minister Hawkins - who won't be Police Minister for very long- should quit for good. He's an unpopular and incompetent minister, and has been so ever since he shaved off his moustache.

Peters has been unsuccessfully attempting to find out the name of the police officer who refused to pursue assault or aggravated robbery charges against Philip Edward's ( McNee's Killer) after an attack on the husband of a judge a year ago, and why the victim asked for charges to be dropped, despite a DNA match and a confession from Edwards that he was responsible for a crime. What is the point doing successful DNA matching if there is no resulting prosecution? Why did Hawkins request the police do DNA testing all those years ago - and it was him that requested it - if police don't ascertain if charges will be pursued before doing the test?

Peters can't even sit on a select committee and hear submissions he requested. He`ll be sitting in the audience. Or perhaps he`ll be hassling immigrant taxi-drivers who collect the dole - and staying out even later in Courtenay Place.

It is now Ron Mark who is taking up the McNee case, asking why the jury was not told that the pair had known each other for about three years, and had been seen in gay bars together.

It’s a pity Edwards hasn't been sentenced yet, as then the Government would not be able to say the case was sub judice and would have to find another excuse not to answer questions.

We do know that only one police officer had the say in the charges being dropped.

But as far as asking the hard questions, reporting question time is as much investigation as this issue gets in the NZ media.

As a side issue, you may be interested to know that the crap defence of "homosexual panic" has been used several times. In such cases judges are not supposed to influence the jury about proportionality - in other words contrasting the violent attack to the supposed "come-on". Interestingly, if it is aggravated assault on a straight person this proportionality doesn’t come into play. This proportionality was discussed in the Court of Appeal in the 1996 case R v Campbell. The defence lawyer for Campbell was Russell Fairbrother, who may have had one or two chats to Hawkins.