The Prime Minister has misled the public for the umpteenth time this year, Labour energy spokesperson Pete Hodgson said.

"Her comments on the electricity reforms made on Crossfire last night showed again that Mrs Shipley tends to stretch the truth to breaking point when put under any kind of pressure.

"Mrs Shipley claimed that "We tried to do better for New Zealand and we brought through things like power reforms and a million New Zealanders are paying less for power today than they were."

"According to a report released by Max Bradford last month, only 30,000 to 50,000 consumers have switched suppliers. Even they are not guaranteed to be paying less than they were prior to the reform process. Given that consumers in Wellington, Christchurch and half of Auckland were hit with power price increases just 5 days after the reforms started, a fair few of those 30-50,000 people may have switched suppliers just to limit the damage.

"Mrs Shipley can't help herself - when the facts don't fit, she just makes it up."

© 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>>