Labour’s pressure-prone deputy leader Michael Cullen should come clean with the New Zealand public over any backroom deal Labour has negotiated with trade unions, Enterprise and Commerce Minister Max Bradford says.

“Dr Cullen’s tantrum in The House yesterday and soft soap routine on radio today cannot mask the fact that under a Labour-Alliance government New Zealand would return to the days of union domination.

“Labour’s policy is that if a group of workers want to negotiate a collective contract with their employer, they have to do it through a union.

“No matter how Miss Clark and Dr Cullen may try to hide it, the simple fact is that under Labour you would have to join and pay a union if you want to be part of a collective contract,” Mr Bradford said.

“Labour would take away people’s right to choose their own bargaining agent for a collective contract and hand monopoly bargaining rights to the unions.

“Is this the pay-back the unions have demanded in return for giving Labour a soft ride to the election?

“If so, who else has Dr Cullen sold out to?,” Mr Bradford asked.

© 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>>