KEY POINTS:
The Opposition may hoot with derision over the "news" that Air New Zealand carried to Kuwait Australian military personnel bound for Iraq, but the hooting will need to be a lot louder to drown out the sighs of relief from the same side of the House.
National Party deputy leader Bill English calls it "a foreign-policy embarrassment on a scale not seen for years", but it is no such thing. Neither is it a scoop for the magazine Investigate, which simply whipped up a storm in a teacup over a matter widely discussed within the company and even publicised in the July issue of the airline's own crew magazine.
The entirely correct version of events is represented in the airline's press release, headed "Air New Zealand increases charter revenue". The release advised that the airline had engaged in a range of charter activity with various customers, resulting in a revenue boost of $18 million in the past 14 months.
The Government, which owns four of every five shares in the flag carrier, ought to be delighted. At a ruinous $885 million cost to the taxpayer, it bailed out the airline in December 2001 - a decision whose wisdom was widely questioned at the time as being driven more by sentiment that sound business sense. Having traded its way into a solid position, is the airline now to be rapped over the knuckles for drumming up business?
Prime Minister Helen Clark and others may claim to be appalled - but that is because the matter has become a political embarrassment at a time when the Government was just getting the better of Opposition leader John Key over - among other things - his Iraq policy flip-flops.
The airline should be commended for making lucrative use of idle assets.
