Green Party MP Rod Donald says Lotteries Commission Chairman Geoff Thompson should resign over the Lotteries salaries scandal, not Chief Executive David Bale.

"The wrong head has rolled," said Rod Donald.

"No-one has challenged David Bale's performance. The issue has always been his excessive salary package.

"It's ridiculous of Jenny Shipley to claim David Bale has done the honourable thing by resigning. That implies he has done something wrong.

"It is the Lotteries Commission which negotiated the package; it is the Lotteries Commission which ignored the advice of the State Services Commissioner that it was too generous; it was the Lotteries Commission which refused to disclose Lotteries salaries last year and therefore it is the Lotteries Commission which should be held to account.

"Presiding Commission member Geoff Thompson is the one who should be resigning. As former President of the National Party, he is clearly a political appointee and he has failed to do his job.

"If he had any political nous he would have known that Bale's salary was excessive and would become an embarrassment to the Government, as indeed it has," Rod Donald said.

© 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>>