Telecom: Who leaked? Who cares.

With the unerring inability that has marked his career in politics since it began, Bill English goes searching for red herrings once again while the big fish all around elude him. Sadly, too many others have joined him angling for herrings while sharks are chewing up NZ's largest company.

Who leaked? Who cares.

While even his party's IT spokesman Maurice Wimpianson realises the nationalisation of Telecom's network is a property rights disaster -- the major issue here! -- Sideshow Bill thinks the big issue is 'the leak!' "This is a billion dollar leak," says an idiotic English, ignoring that the announced nationalisation has destroyed a billion dollars of Telecom's value, not the leak -- it is the act of vandalism against Telecom that destroyed one billion dollars, not the advance warning of it.

"Someone senior in the Government, a politician or an official, set out on a path of economic and political sabotage," Mr English told reporters. What an abject moron. This seeker of the irrelevant, this parliamentary apostle of wetness, suggests somehow that the whistle-blower did something immoral.

They didn't. What was 'sabotage' was Cunliffe's announcement -- what is immoral is the nationalisation. What was neither of the above was the advance warning of theft which the leak represents.

Whoever the whistle-blower was, whoever divulged Cabinet's plan to nationalise Telecom's network, did exactly the right thing. What the whistle-blower did was warn a victim of burglary what he overheard the burglars planning to do to them. It was a moral act.

No wonder its worth has escaped Bill English.

NOTE: Liberty Scott has summarised here the main reactions to the announced nationalisation of Telecom's network.

UPDATE 1: Here's the headline I should have used, from a blogger who'd make a better sub-editor than I: 'When Leaks are Followed by Drips.'

UPDATE 2: It doesn't get any better for Telecom now, does it (see lunchtime chart at right). The loss of value since Wednesday afternon is now $1.7 billion. While some of the sell-off is due to Telecom's own troubles (with AAPT for example), as Tyndall Investment's James Lindsay observes, "the company's results are ``completely overshadowed'' by the government's decision May 3 to give rivals more access to Telecom's network." So Labour's attack on Telecom now amounts to an act of vandalism that has destroyed over a billion-and-a-half dollars in just a day-and-a-half of selling.
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LINKS: Cabinet document leak to Telecom "economic and political sabotage": opposition - The Techsploder
The bilion dollar leak - NZ Herald
National and ACT show some principle - Liberty Scott
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TAGS: Politics-National, Politics-NZ, Property_Rights