Jim Anderton will be taking his message of outrage at golden handshakes and excessive payouts in the public sector to the Prime Minister's electorate tonight.

"On the same day we hear that the Tourism board fiasco has been 'settled' with another payment of $210,000 we have the spectre of the head of the ARST getting a $389,000 pay-out," Jim Anderton said.

'It is completely mystifying how the chief executive of the ARST could be paid out nearly two year's salary when he left the job because the ARST was being wound up and replaced with Infrastructure Auckland.

"The creation of Infrastructure Auckland was a direct result of decisions Jenny Shipley made when she became Prime Minister. She is therefore directly responsible for this fiasco as well.

A full review of the public service and the State Sector Act is being pledged by the Alliance in the wake of a series of scandals involving state sector management.

"It's gone too far," Jim Anderton said.

'There is obviously something very sick at the heart of public sector management and there doesn't seem to be any accountability when things go wrong or when public money is misspent.

"Tonight I will be delivering a message of outrage to the Prime Minister from her own electorate.

"She didn't turn up in parliament yesterday to answer questions on the Hawkesby affair and today she avoided them. I am coming to Ashburton to find the answers," Jim Anderton said

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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>>