Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney's tenor and tone are now less con­fronta­tion­al and much dif­fer­ent to pre­vi­ous­ly, says PNM sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds.Hinds was speak­ing in the Sen­ate dur­ing yes­ter­day's de­bate on the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Of­fences) Bill.Deem­ing Vol­ney ego­tis­ti­cal and ec­cen­tric, Hinds al­so said Vol­ney was an ex­trem­ist and a hard­lin­er.Hinds not­ed that Vol­ney had tak­en a "beat­ing" re­cent­ly from In­de­pen­dent and PNM sen­a­tors on the re­cent DNA bill who had crit­i­cised that bill.

"He found him­self in the line for fire and in­deed he said it was his bap­tism of fire," Hinds added.He said Vol­ney was con­dem­na­to­ry of the sen­a­tors' re­marks.Hinds said that from Vol­ney's tone yes­ter­day, Vol­ney had done a good job of pa­per­ing over Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion on that bill and "one would have thought this was a sta­ble, sen­si­tive gov­ern­ment," he added.Hinds al­so called for im­prove­ment of mag­is­trates' terms and con­di­tions, say­ing that group did not even hold diplo­mat­ic pass­ports.

"I saw the Chief Mag­is­trate dri­ving her­self the oth­er day and she looked so tired, she works long hours," Hinds added.He al­so said "Colour Me Or­ange" work­ers were now laugh­ing at the Gov­ern­ment.In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor Vic­tor Wheel­er said the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice bill un­der de­bate yes­ter­day would on­ly ad­dress a small per­cent­age of the crime prob­lem.PP Sen­a­tor David Ab­du­lah al­lud­ed to de­nial of the prob­lem by peo­ple who were re­moved from the sit­u­a­tion "who pre­tend dai­ly that all is well when, in fact, it is far from," Ab­du­lah added.