Attacking the messengers

Clark and Cullen really don’t like public servants who tell the truth.

Insolent Prick has highlighted this veiled threat to the Ombudsmen:

“Cullen said he held serious concerns about the precedent created, and would take the matter up with his office after the election. ”

Outrageous. He gets caught trying to suppress vital information, and his response is to blame the Ombudsmen. Read the fucking Official Information Act – all information should be made public unless there is a very sound reason not to. And helping Labour win the election is not a sound reason.

With Clark endorsing the ethics of Taito Field, and Cullen attacking the Ombudsmen, these (hopefully) last days in office are starting to stink badly.

And we also have Clark jumping in accusing Treasury of incompetence. This from the Government which had Michael Cullen write a letter instructing Treasury to assume that there will be *no* change to the rate of voluntary repayments if there is no interest on loans.

Not a single economist in NZ could or would try and defend that assumption. It is to be blunt a lie. One can argue all you want about changes to the rate of borrowing, but no-one at all can argue that abolishing interest would not affect the rate of voluntary repayments. This is like saying if there was no interest charged on credit cards, everyone would still pay them off on time. It almost qualifies for fraud, to instruct Treasury to make such an assumption, and then release costings based on that instruction while suppressing the original costings.

On behalf of Dr Cullen I apologise to all the staff at Treasury for making you produce such a bogus costing.