A crony appointment

When National was in government, I spent years criticising their crony appointments. Now it looks like I'm going to be doing the same for Labour as well. The first one I've noticed: they've appointed former Labour MP and cabinet minister Pete Hodgson as chair of Callaghan Innovation.

Hodgson isn't a terrible choice for the role - he's a former Minister of Research, Science and Technology and chair of Otago University's technology spinoff company. If he was appointed on his merits via a transparent process in which he was obviously the best candidate, then that would be fine. But being appointed by his own party automatically raises doubts and suggests that it was a crony appointment. I guess we'll find out the truth in 20 working days...