The government is facing considerable embarrassment over the court fall-out from the Greenpeace protest of the East Cape last year.
New Zealand police boarded a vessel on the high seas, restrained its skipper and took over the operation of the vessel.
The skipper Elvis Teddy is this week having his day in court, claiming he was engaged in a legitimate protest and that he was not operating the fishing vessel San Pietro in an unsafe manner, as charged.
The capture of the San Pietro took place outside New Zealand's territorial waters, some 14 nautical miles from the New Zealand coast.
Anywhere else in the world high speed boatloads of possibly armed men taking over another vessel on the high seas is known as piracy.
That these people were uniformed and operating under the instruction of the NZ government doesn't change that fact, but it does raise further questions, like are we paying taxes to a ‘rogue state' which blatantly disregards the law in order to shore up its own investment policies – in this case selling off the seabed to foreign interests?

R. Shaw, Otumoetai.