officer. While unfortunate, it is no doubt that result of a search for
sharp and striking expression in a report that would be widely read. He
cannot have overstated the evidence deliberately. Similarly at senior
management level in Air New Zealand there would have been a natural
tendency to try to have the company's case put in as favourable a light
as possible before the Commission; but it was adding a further and
sinister dimension to their conduct to assert that they went as far as
organised perjury.


Costs

The applicants ask for an order quashing one of the Commissioner's
decisions as to costs. The decision in question and the reasons for it
are stated in an appendix to the report:

... I asked the airline for its submissions on the question of
costs. The general tenor of the submissions is that the
establishment of this Royal Commission was directed by the New
Zealand Government and that the airline should not be ordered to
meet any part of the public expenditure so incurred. As a statement
of general principle, this is correct. But there is specific
statutory power to order that a party to the inquiry either pay or
contribute towards the cost of the inquiry, and that the power
should be exercised, in my opinion, whenever the conduct of that
party at the hearing has materially and unnecessarily extended the
duration of the hearing. This clearly occurred at the hearings
which took place before me.

In an inquiry of this kind, an airline can either place all its