And no, this isn’t about the Cathedral…
John Key was down in Christchurch yesterday, making some announcements about the CBD (which I might discuss later). He did his usual – poorly designed infographic with a picture of him, tweeted out. That’s fine, I’d expect that. What I didn’t expect was that CERA would retweet it.
Not once, but a number of times. But then, if you look at the CERA twitter account, it seems to spend a lot of time retweeting Key:
CERA have also, excitingly, just launched their own facebook page, as they took to twitter to tell us, on September 10, 2013. They posted this up on that page:
Clearly, what the Prime Minister has to say is important to CERA and the recovery; however, CERA is a government department, and should remain apolitical. Posting National Party material through these channels crosses the line into political activism. Remember all those times when Brownlee has claimed that the opposition were “politicizing” the earthquakes? Well, here he is, using a massive government department to do exactly that.
Update: If you want to check the State Services guidelines, they’re here. Front page, it says
We must: – maintain the political neutrality required to enable us to work with current and future governments
[…] Dann at Rebuilding Christchurch has picked up on some seriously concerning signs of political partisanship from CERA. The […]
[…] has been blurred, like when CERA went on a social media crusade for the National party last year. The slick graphics and speeches are all well and good, but Christchurch wants actions, not […]