Rob Hosking saw what I didn’t:
Michael Cullen’s appointment to the board of New Zealand Post has one major political impact – it completely undercuts the basis of Labour’s whole political attack for the past 18 months.
That attack has been based on one word: privatisation.
. . . In short, Labour’s political strategy still appears based on its over-thumbed copies of The Hollow Men.
Dr Cullen’s acceptance of the job at Kiwibank completely undercuts all that.
If this really is a cunning plot to undercut Labour, it’s one of which Machiavelli and Blackadder would be proud, and I hope it works.
But I also hope that it doesn’t put an end to the eventual privitisation – maybe partial, maybe full – of at least some SOEs.
National pledged it wouldn’t sell any state assets in this parliamentary term because Labour successfully turned privatisation in to a dirty word.
It needn’t be and the economy would be stronger if, in the future, we owned less as taxpayers and more as individuals.