Dunne: Local Govt Forum is ACT in drag

The Local Government Forum still does not get it, United Future leader Peter Dunne said today. United Future's plan to take the GST off rates is about helping low and fixed income property owners hit by high property rates because of the explosion in property values, he said.

"The aim is to cut the costs that ratepayers bear now," Mr Dunne said. "This is not a theoretical argument about how to design a tax system as the Local Government Forum seems fixated upon - but much more about doing something positive for suffering ratepayers. "It's time the forum and its associates stopped seeing everything through its ACT cheerleader prism, and spent a moment or two looking at things from the standpoint of those struggling now with mounting rates bills because of rising property values.

"We need to see the forum put practical solutions ahead of ACT ideology," Mr Dunne said.

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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>>