I'm sure the New Zealand Supreme Court is awesome, but I wonder how much traction this would've gotten if it was not publicized all around the world...
I'm not sure what you're trying to say? That NZ has a corrupt judiciary? It may be incestuous, but I think that's a (very big) stretch to call it corrupt and imply that, were it not for the media attention, it would be for sale.
Not at all. When this story first made headlines, I thought: Why did the NZ government allow the US to do this on their land in the first place? I just noticed that in the states, sometimes you don't necessarily get treated fairly in edge cases until you make a lot of noise (blogs, videos, etc.).
Of course, IANAL and I have no idea how the legal system works...