A year or so back I discovered  that my co-panellist that day on Jim Mora’s Afternoons programme on Radio New Zealand was to be Christine Rankin. I don’t think I’d met her before. It’s true that I had some pre-conceived and not very flattering ideas about her. But  my opinion of her had not always been negative.

I remember watching television news coverage of the case she took to the Employment Court in 2001 for unfair termination of her contract as CEO of WINZ by  the State Services Commission.  Much of the argument revolved around whether this effective sacking was politically motivated, but what captured my and the general public’s attention most were the extraordinary revelations about a conversation she had had with the Head of the Prime Minister’s Office, Mark Prebble. Read the rest of this entry »