ACT Finance spokesman and Epsom candidate Rodney Hide said today that Auckland Mayor Christine Fletcher's appointment of a complaints bureau was "bureaucracy gone mad".

Rodney Hide was commenting on the Mayor's announcement that Hon Robert Smellie QC has been appointed to set up a complaints review office at the Auckland City Council.

"I hadn't realised it had got this bad. I have had a lot of complaints about Auckland City Council in general and Mayor Christine Fletcher in particular but I hadn't realised that the complaints were so many that she needed a specialist complaints office."

"It's outrageous that we have a do-nothing Mayor trying to hold down two jobs and then employing someone at the cost of $100,000 a year to handle complaints about her performance.

"Once again it is the ratepayers of Auckland who are the losers," said Rodney Hide.

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>>