said she was “appalled” by her behaviour<\/a>, but Aitken said the attorney-general had the wrong information.<\/p>\n“I was shocked,” Aitken said. “The information the attorney is basing her comments on is incorrect. Disturbingly, this had been the tenor of media reports and commentary based on incorrect information.”<\/p>\n
Aitken was cross-examined by special counsel Tim Stephens KC later on Monday morning.<\/p>\n
He began by asking Aitken about the background of her legal career, her time working as a lawyer, and ultimately her appointment as a district court judge.<\/p>\n
Stephens KC asked about her relationship with te ao M\u0101ori in the courts. Aitken said she kept her obligations as a judge in mind by acknowledging the crest of the New Zealand coat of arms that hung inside the courts.<\/p>\n
“Our responsibility as Treaty partners, whether we’re p\u0101keha or M\u0101ori, as judges is to give effect to the coat of arms, which has M\u0101ori and p\u0101keha equally depicted in a balanced way in that coat of arms,” she said.<\/p>\n
“So I always glance at it when I enter the court, and I do that to remind myself that I must judge without fear or favour, affection or ill will, whoever’s before the court.”<\/p>\n
![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/4K7ILPE_120525MKNORTHERN01_jpg.jpeg\")
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\nThe Northern Club.
\nPhoto: RNZ \/ Marika Khabazi\n<\/p>\n
Stephens KC questioned the judge on what she had had to drink that night at the Northern Club. She recalled she had between one and two glasses of champagne.<\/p>\n
It was suggested by Stephens KC she may have been “disinhibited” by the alcohol.<\/p>\n
“You must have been affected to some extent?” he asked.<\/p>\n
Aitken rejected that suggestion.<\/p>\n
“I was not affected in any way that I felt or discerned at the time,” she said. “I was my normal, tired self.”<\/p>\n
Stephens KC asked Aitken if she recalled saying Peters’ comments were lies or misinformation.<\/p>\n
“I’ve never been able to remember the precise words that I used – I’ve maintained that from the outset because I don’t, but they would have been to that effect.”<\/p>\n
She disputed calling the comments disgusting, saying she “did not use those words”.<\/p>\n
“That’s just not a phrase that I would use, ‘this is disgusting’, in that context. I may have said ‘this is appalling’ – that would be the sort of phrase I might have used – but I did not use that expression.”<\/p>\n
‘I would not lie in this court room’<\/p>\n
In the afternoon, Stephens KC asked about what happened after the Judge made her remarks.<\/p>\n
Judge Aitken said she looked back as she was led away from the event and through a doorway, which was when she first saw Winston Peters.<\/p>\n
“My honest explanation has always been at whatever point I was on that return back, when I turned back I could see that it was Winston Peters, and that is the only time I saw him, that was the only time I recognised who it was.”<\/p>\n
Tim Stephens KC asked if the Judge thought Peters was a very recognisable figure.<\/p>\n
“Visually yes,” she said.<\/p>\n
Judge Aitken said, however, his voice was not recognisable to her.<\/p>\n
“I don’t listen to Mr Peters speaking very often, if at all.<\/p>\n
“I cannot think of a single incident, perhaps the odd comment on the radio.”<\/p>\n
The focus turned to a comment the Judge claimed to make upon arriving back at her table.<\/p>\n
Her evidence was, upon returning, that she said something to the effect of ‘oh god, I’ve just called Winston Peters a lair’.<\/p>\n
But Tim Stephens KC questioned why none of her other dinner guests mentioned her making that comment in their evidence.<\/p>\n
“Each of them were asked whether you had used those words, and they did not remember you doing that,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And each of them were asked whether you had indicated, in some way, that you had made a mistake of some sort, and none of them remember that.”<\/p>\n
The Judge maintained she had made those comments.<\/p>\n
“I had not recognised the voice, I did not know it was Mr Peters when I made that statement, I realised at the end, and that’s what I was exclaiming to my friends and colleagues at the table,” she said.<\/p>\n
Tim Stephens KC moved on to a letter prepared by one of the Judges who had given evidence last week, Judge Pippa Sinclair.<\/p>\n
In her evidence, she said the Judge realised it was Winston Peters speaking after she had recognised Casey Costello at the event.<\/p>\n
But Judge Aitken said it was the other way around.<\/p>\n
“She’s got it around the wrong way, that is not the order in which it happened, she’s mistaken about that,” the Judge said.<\/p>\n
“I clicked that it was Casey Costello, once I turned back and realised that it was Winston Peters.”<\/p>\n
Stephens KC asked if it was the case that Judge Aitken had actually heard the comments, saw and recognised Minister Costello, and then clicked that the speaker was Peters.<\/p>\n
Judge Aitken said she “most certainly” did not accept the KC’s suggestion.<\/p>\n
“I would not lie in this court room, and I have not lied at any point in these proceedings from the outset, from the very first conversation I had with the Chief District Court Judge.”<\/p>\n
The hearing will continue on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero, a daily newsletter<\/a> curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"District Court Judge Ema Aitken at the Judicial Conduct Panel on Monday. Photo: Finn Blackwell \/ RNZ A…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[48,47,42,43,49,46,44,45,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-286838","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-current-affairs","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-podcasts","13":"tag-public-radio","14":"tag-radio-new-zealand","15":"tag-rnz","16":"tag-top-news","17":"tag-top-stories","18":"tag-topnews","19":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286838","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=286838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/286838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=286838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=286838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=286838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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