Magistrates and Judges

In the positions of greatest power within the judicial system Maori participation is almost non-existent. Only one of the 45 magistrates in New Zealand is a Maori, and it took the pakeha judicial system 100 years to appoint him. There is still no Maori judge among the 21 on the Bench at present, nor has there ever been one.

The highest court in the New Zealand judicial system, the Privy Council, stands as a symbol of white ethnocentrism within the British Commonwealth, and as a glaring example of the white cultural domination of New Zealand. As an English court, its irrelevance in this society is self-evident.