{"id":237681,"date":"2026-01-17T07:25:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T07:25:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/237681\/"},"modified":"2026-01-17T07:25:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-17T07:25:09","slug":"judge-accused-of-verbally-abusing-nz-first-leader-winston-peters-to-face-conduct-panel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/237681\/","title":{"rendered":"Judge accused of verbally abusing NZ First leader Winston Peters to face conduct panel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"No<\/p>\n

\nDistrict Court Judge Ema Aitken denies some of the claims.
\nPhoto: RNZ Insight\/Dan Cook\n<\/p>\n

The Chief District Court judge could be called to give evidence in the hearing of a judge accused of disrupting a New Zealand First event.<\/p>\n

District Court Judge Ema Aitken will appear before a judicial conduct panel, after allegedly disrupting a function at Auckland’s exclusive Northern Club in 2024.<\/p>\n

She is accused of shouting that NZ First leader Winston Peters was lying.<\/p>\n

Judge Aitken said she didn’t shout<\/a>, didn’t recognise Peters’ voice when she responded to remarks she overheard and didn’t know it was a political event.<\/p>\n

A judicial conduct panel will review her conduct at a hearing in February.<\/p>\n

A minute from last December indicated an intention from Judge Aitken, represented by David Jones KC, to call Chief District Court Judge Heemi Taumaunu.<\/p>\n

“The Panel requests that the application foreshadowed by counsel for the Judge for a direction that a summons be issued to a witness should be filed by no later than Friday, 23 January 2026,” it said.<\/p>\n

“That request applies to both the summons to the Ministry of Justice employee… and to the summons to the Chief District Court Judge.”<\/p>\n

The panel overseeing the inquiry is led by retired Court of Appeal Judge Brendan Brown KC, and includes sitting Court of Appeal Judge Justice Jillian Mallon and former Governor-General Sir Jerry Mateparae.<\/p>\n

It will determine facts and write a report to the attorney-general, including whether the removal of the judge is justified.<\/p>\n

The inquiry is scheduled for Auckland next month.<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"District Court Judge Ema Aitken denies some of the claims. Photo: RNZ Insight\/Dan Cook The Chief District Court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237682,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-237681","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-podcasts","15":"tag-public-radio","16":"tag-radio-new-zealand","17":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237681\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}