Kit Richards deserves an award for enterprise, ACT MP Gerry Eckhoff said today.

"Mr Richards is laughing all the way to the bank, while Prime Minister Helen Clark is left looking extremely foolish.

"Helen Clark thought she had single-handedly saved the Beech trees of the West Coast. All she did was provide Mr Richards and his business associates with cash to develop their own business.

"Why logging is sustainable on private land but not on crown land is an absolute mystery that Ms Clark and Ms Lee need to explain to the public.

"The irony is that this Government wasted $120 million without 'saving' a single Beech tree.

"The fear now is that the red-faced Government will retaliate on applications to mine on Crown land. They have shown that they are certainly vindictive enough to do so," Gerry Eckhoff said.

ENDS

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>