The appointment of machine-man Mike Kaiser, by machine man Stephen Conroy to the position of government relations and external affairs chief of the National Broadband Network Company, frankly, stinks. It stinks of nepotism, the odious 'jobs-for-the-boys' ethos Labor is so often accused of by it's detractors.

Kaiser, a known and self-admitted corrupt Labor Party apparatchik is the Dennis Ferguson of non-conservative politics. Where-ever he shows up, there's a hue and cry to force him to move on. At $450,000 per annum - more than Kevin Rudd is paid by the people, and let's not make any mistakes, this is a publicly funded role - what is the man expected to be doing other than rubbing shoulders with the Labor inner circle. Something he's been doing non-stop since outing himself as a ballot rorter in the mid-eighties.

Not a good look, yet another possibly fatal faux pas by Conroy which adds more tension to the noose he's placed around his own neck with the internet censorship legislation. If Rudd is such a control freak, why isn't he controlling these machine men??