Alliance Ministers should accept the blame for the Corrections Department being forced to offer bribes to potential objectors to new prisons says ACT's Justice spokesman Stephen Franks.

"The government is simply having to do what every private New Zealander has to consider to get through RMA hurdles.

"The solution lies in the hands of the Hon Sandra Lee, Corrections Minister Robson's Alliance comrade. She is responsible for the Whitianga Waterways debacle and for failing to ensure that sensible amendments to the Resource Management Act made their way through the House. Instead even the weak improvements to the RMA in the current bill have been reversed in select committee, with Alliance support.

"When his officials are forced into supporting the spurious RMA objection industry to get important progress on a prison, Mr Robson can't stay silent. He should say whether he will support proper RMA reform to eliminate these wasted costs of development," Mr Franks said.

Ends

© Scoop Media

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>>