“The cheek and audacity of Prime Minister Helen Cark was displayed for all to see this week when she attended the launch of a global genealogy program for descendants of the Shetland Islands”, said New Zealand First Leader and Member for Tauranga, Rt Hon Winston Peters.

It is estimated that there are some 80,000 New Zealanders whose ancestry can be traced to the Shetlands.

“Ms Clark’s government recently imposed a huge increase in charges for establishing lines of ancestry, by sharply hiking fees for accessing data held by Births, Deaths and Marriages. By attending the launch of the global genealogy program, she has demonstrated a level of headline hunting for which she and several of her Ministers have become renowned,” Mr Peters said.

“I cannot believe for one moment that she would not have felt uncomfortable, when posing for the cameras as she did, lapping up the publicity, knowing that behind the scenes, she and her colleagues had taken a stick to these very same people and ratcheted up the costs for the research they so desperately depend upon to make their connections with their past family histories”, concluded Mr Peters.

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>>