Heather Simpson - the 'H Bomb'

The Sunday Star-Times has run a feature on Heather Simpson of the Prime Minister's Office. This is interesting, as my recent NZ Herald article on state funding cited Simpson as the epitome of a state funding party hack, and now this article goes on to investigate issues relating to this. The theme of the piece is that Simpson is the most powerful unelected person in New Zealand. It quotes Clark as saying 'I might be Number One but Heather is Number Two and she's more powerful than me.' Many Labour MPs are furious with Simpson due to her role in the unlawful spending fiasco and probably more generally because of her political influence on the party and government. And while Simpson might be an unpleasant person in politics - by many accounts - the problems with her shouldn't be seen as a personal one, but relating to the anti-democratic nature of her role and influence. Under the current system of significant backdoor state funding, all the party machines will have such forces involved with them.