McCarten confirmed as Cunliffe’s Chief of Staff

The Daily Blog has announced that Matt McCarten will be David Cunliffe’s Chief of Staff.

As I said earlier, this will be great when Labour say people should pay more tax, when their chief of staff ran an organisation that owed $150,000 to the IRD in unpaid taxes – and even worse most of it was tax deducted from employees and not passed on.

Imagine if John Key hired a chief of staff who had run an organisation that spent employee’s taxes on political projects, rather than paying the IRD, He’d be crucified by the left as condoning tax avoidance.

McCarten is a very skilled operator, but he is from the hard left. This is a clear signal that Labour is going to go even more hard left.

Danyl at Dim Post notes:

Can Matt McCarten turn things around? If you’re seeking to unify the party then the answer there would be a massive ‘No.’ The last thing Labour leads is a Chief of Staff with a big personality, big profile, big ego, talent for skullduggery and a strong left-wing political agenda that’s totally at odds with those of his leader’s enemies within the party.

But if you’re Cunliffe and you’re looking at Goff, Mallard, Cosgrove, King et al and coming to the conclusion that unity with them is impossible, war is inevitable and the best thing to do is try and win it then McCarten would be a pretty great choice

So McCarten’s appointment isn’t to help Labour win the election, but to help Cunliffe defeat his enemies in caucus.

UPDATE: Looks like the misappropriated tax payments have never been paid. The documents for UNITE Support Services show it was finally liquidated on 29 May 2013 with no funds available for creditors.

An earlier report showed that the IRD was owed around $101,000 by the shell company.