Monday, April 05, 2004
Only when it suits please Professor
My Right is no fan of career academics (they usually occupy the Labour Party benches for starters), but this seems particularly dismissive from Jim Sutton. A stinging attack on a piece of opinion / research from Professor Jane Kelsey, the same sort of academic ideologue that helps shape so much Labour Party policy (ERA anyone?), but obviously, when the findings don't suit, attack the author huh Jimbo:
'BEAT-UP'Full story from Stuff here.
Mr Sutton later said the report was "an enormous beat-up by Prof Kelsey", and a political rather than academic work.
"There is absolutely no merit in the story whatsoever," he said.
"New Zealand does not go around bullying Pacific Island countries, quite on the contrary we concentrate our overseas development assistance in the Pacific, and we try to help them.
"They have no show in the world of having a modern standard of living if they don't trade."
Prof Kelsey cost the Government a fortune in Official Information Act "fishing expeditions", Mr Sutton said.
"To me she is a complete waste of time.
"She has gone off around the Pacific looking up her old mates. . . anti-globalisation campaigners who always take the view that trade is bad, and that developing countries should be allowed to lead their simply blissful village lives without considering what that means in the way of poverty and ill health, and has come home with a nice glow thinking everyone in the Pacific agrees with her."
"Her career is to be radical and controversial, so that gets the students queuing up to prove how they reject the values of their parents, by signing up to her courses in large numbers."
