Handle9:

 

In the Westminster system the courts have no role in “challenging parliament.” The whole concept is an absolute anathema to democracy. 

 

The role of judges is administrative , not legislative. Parliament is sovereign and makes the laws, the judiciary interprets and administers the laws. 

Australia also uses the Westminster system and yet the High Court is constitutionally empowered to strike down unconstitutional laws just like the US Supreme Court. In any case there is nothing inherently, fundamentally superior about the Westminster system. It more or less works, most of the time, so that's good, I guess? But it doesn't have a monopoly on the right way to do things.

 

The idea that unelected officials have some power of veto over a democratically elected government is incredibly concerning. A judiciary that has become increasingly activist is a real problem in New Zealand. If the judges want to change the law they need to run for parliament. 

 

The only power of veto they have is when they have interpreted (as you yourself said is their job) the law and shown it to be contrary to the constitution. Parliament is free to make as many dumb or discriminatory laws as they like, and as long they are constitutional the courts can't touch them. And I agree that they should not be able to.

But there has to be someone to keep Parliamentary overreach in check. There's nothing stopping Christopher Luxon from deciding he's done with this whole election thing and declaring the coalition to be rulers in perpetuity as long as he can convince Winston and Seymour to go along with him other than that it would be a bad look. But if he wanted it enough a couple of days of urgency in Parliament could mean there's no more election in November. More reasonably, there is nothing stopping him from repealing the Bill of Rights or indeed any other "constitutional" law he finds inconvenient. As the Americans say, if your rights can be voted away by the government then they aren't rights. They're privileges.

There is a problem in New Zealand wherein "The Constitution" is a nebulous thing where no two people can necessarily agree on where it begins and ends let alone what it says in the middle. I think a codified, written constitution would be a great benefit, but at the moment the political climate is certainly too fraught to have a grown-up conversation about things like what even constitutes human rights, let alone Te Tiriti o Waitangi. The likes of Seymour would love nothing more than to write a constitution that locks the Mahrees out of the agreement their tupuna made with pakeha about shared governance of the land and the peoples, and Winston would love to legislate the gays and the trans wokesters into the gutter.