“Time will tell whether Phillida Bunkle is telling the truth about Wellington Central” says National MP Annabel Young. “Bunkle’s current line is that she hasn’t made up her mind whether she will pull out. Everyone else thinks that Jim Anderton has made up his mind and Bunkle will do as she is told in the last week before the election.”

Bunkle is quoted in City Voice (28/10/99) as saying at a public meeting “The strategy to make a change of government has to be – vote Labour in the electorate and Alliance on the List.” She now denies making this statement. At a public meeting in Wellington last night (28/10/99) she made a strong statement of denial and said that she has complained to the Press Council. The question for the Press Council will be - do you believe Bunkle‘s version or the recollection of the many people in the audience?

“Bunkle is trying to have it both ways,” says Annabel Young. “Bunkle is trying to say that she is morally superior because she hasn’t pulled out of the race. But she is just playing games with the electorate. She is stringing the voters along until it suits the Alliance to pull her out.”

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>>