Good riddance

Foreign Minister Murray McCully has announced that he will not stand at the next election.

Good riddance. McCully is one of New Zealand's worst ever Ministers, with a history of control-freakery and corruption stretching back to the Shipley years. In his current term as a Minister, he has vindictively cut funding to aid agencies which criticised the government, awarded contracts corruptly and without tenders, corruptly created a position to get an opposition MP out of Parliament, all while boozing his way around the world at our expense. More recently there's the festering sore of his corrupt Saudi sheep deal, which saw him lie to his Cabinet colleagues in order to bribe a Saudi billionaire.

New Zealand will be better off for his resignation. Unfortunately, given the way these things usually work, National will probably add insult to injury by giving him an honour on the way out.