Another crony appointment

The government has appointed former Labour MP Steve Maharey as chair of Pharmac. He's not obviously unqualified for the role, and if he was appointed on his merits via a transparent process in which he was obviously the best candidate, then that would be fine. Sadly, that's not something we can take for granted - Labour seems no better than National in this regard, shoulder-tapping their people and bypassing the usual process to shoehorn them into positions. As for whether that happened here, we'll find out in 20 working days.