Labour is happy for union delegates to be politically partisan
Last election the politically neutral PSA sent more than 600,000 letters as part of "Labour's job factory" to get Labour re-elected. After the Madeleine Setchell affair the PSA raised concerns whether National would run a politically neutral public service.
That's because the PSA like it how it is. Labour-slanted. It wants to provide an inpression that it is politically neutural. Then this happens.
Labour Chief Whip's tax-payer -funded manager sends an e-mail to an electorate agent for Dunedin South. It begins with an invitation to a PSA meeting, of which she is a delegate. It is sent from her parliamentary e-mail, and signed off by her as office manager for Barnett.
Big weekend for your fella?" in reference to yesterday's Labour Party selection contest in Dunedin, (which David Benson-Pope lost to Claire Curran).But the e-mail was accidentally sent to Katherine Rich's Dunedin office. Tim Barnett thinks a politically partisan e-mail like this is fine because the sender was acting as a PSA delegate at the time it was sent, even though she is paid by Parliamentary Services.
Hope it all goes well for David. Despite the sigh! oh sh..! events over the past year still think we would be silly to flick experience when on the ropes. The newcomers can try the List and earn some stripes.
So it is fine to be partisan if you are a PSA delegate, but not (at least publically) if you are a public servant with no union involvement? That really indicates that Labour is does not want the Public Service to be politically neutral, while running some sort of public front that it is neutural - which is why the PSA raised concerns whether National will run a politically neutral or partisan public service.
The PSA is quite happy to be an agent of Labour - while running
seminars on political neutrality to maintain that front - and to ensure politically neutrality after the election.