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After being doomed politically by emails he considered stolen from his PC, former National Party leader Don Brash is now putting his "rusty" computer skills to work in Cambodia.
Dr Brash has spent much of the past three months in Phnom Penh, helping the central bank computerise its payments systems as part of a project funded by the Asia Development Bank.
The former Reserve Bank Governor said he had been offered the job after being recommended by former Labour Cabinet minister David Butcher who was consulting on the telecommunications sector in Cambodia.
"He rang me and said they were looking for someone in the central banking area," Dr Brash said. "I said, 'well, I know quite a bit about that'."
Dr Brash said his computer skills were "rusty" but he had top-level advisers helping him with the technology. He had travelled through much of Asia, but never to Cambodia.
Police have been investigating after hundreds of Dr Brash's emails last year made it into the public arena.
Dr Brash believed they were stolen from his personal computer. Some of his emails were published in the Nicky Hager book The Hollow Men, an inside look at the wheelings and dealings of the National Party.
Besides his work with the bank, Dr Brash has also been appointed a director on the board of one of Australia's largest banks, the ANZ National Bank. Another directorship he had secured would be announced shortly, he said.
Dr Brash was the Governor of New Zealand's Reserve Bank from 1988 to 2002 before he resigned from the $500,000-a-year job to pursue a career in politics. He quit Parliament in February.
- NZPA
