The PM is now screeching over National’s 90 new employee probationary period, though it’s shorter than international norms.

It will be interesting to see if Annette King and other Wellington Labour candidates join in the screeching. King was once on the less irrational right wing of Labour. She’ll know how much damage the lack of a probationary period has caused to potentially risky employees.

She’ll also know of the dangers to Wellington if Labour’s own announced employment law changes proceed. If contracting and temporary or casual work by New Zealanders is stifled, that vibrant Wellington creative sector will sputter. But the business model will continue, with a change.  Instead of contracts to locals, more contracts will go offshore.

Bangalore will be grateful to the spiteful fools about to lose power in New Zealand.

Indeed, so vulnerable is Wellington’s contractor driven economy, Annette King should consider doing a Hawkins.

George Hawkins has tabled member’s bills to give his electorate special laws (such as on graffiti and glue sniffing). They’ve embodied policies that conflict head on with the direction of 9 years Labour ideology. They also conflict with 40 years of concentrated effort to eliminate local differences in our criminal law. Only the West Coast managed to protect its different rules (and only because Police had to accept that they’d be ineffective if they ignored local custom).

King could now move to exempt Wellington from her colleagues’ pending law to destroy contracting.

She was once an ideological soul-mate of Hawkins (see Bassett’s new book for the background). Hawkins independence has worked for him. It could save King’s reputation.