John Key and his colleagues are going to send the Special Air Service to Afghanistan. The current talk about whether National should do so is, unfortunately, academic. The decision is already made.

I have just been through an eleven month defamation case. Fortunately, we mostly won. About 20 to 1 if it was a score. If I was ever going to be sued like this, I am pleased that the suer was a man of Lynton Crosby’s standing and that his case against me was so weak….

Unfortunately, defamation is a tool that can be used by any well resourced company or individual against people who have annoyed them or who they do not like. This has serious implications for journalism and public accountability — potentially chilling freedom of speech about the people who most deserve scrutiny and criticism — since the sad fact is that it is much safer for a news organisation to criticise poor people than rich and powerful ones.

Leaked Cabinet plans list the government’s infrastructure projects and show that even facing the worst economic crisis in half a century, the government intends to restrain its spending….

National’s campaign is hiding a front bench full of 1990s-style free marketers behind John Key’s well-scripted one-liners….

Investigative journalist Nicky Hager says National’s health policies have gone publicly unnoticed, but involve a shift back to 1990s free-market reforms….

JOHN KEY plans to appoint former party leader Don Brash as high commissioner to London if National is elected later this year, sources have told the Sunday Star-Times….

Nicky Hager is interviewed about lessons for the public from his book and the film The Hollow Men

Award-winning documentary maker Alister Barry (Someone Else’s Country, In a Land of Plenty) brings this exposé of behind-the-scenes politics in an all-too-real political thriller.

• DVD copies of “The Hollow Men” documentary are available by mailorder priced at $30 each, including gst and postage. Simply email alisterbarry@paradise.net.nz indicating how many copies you would like and your postal address.

• Interview with Nicky Hager from the DVD

National Party leader John Key appears to be using taxpayers’ money to pay for his controversial Australian strategy advisers, Crosby/Textor. Inside information strongly points to the firm being paid through Key’s parliamentary office rather than by the National Party, even though the Australians are primarily assisting the party’s election campaign strategy….

National leader John Key’s campaign is being overseen by the same highly controversial manipulators who directed Don Brash’s ill-fated tilt at power….

National Party leader John Key is talking about changing New Zealand’s electoral system. Nicky Hager writes about Key’s plans and the lobby groups that are pushing for the change.

The great weakness of much journalism is a process-worker approach to assembling quotation-based stories….

The most impressive new work [of 2006] was Dean Parker’s The Hollow Men (Bats), adapted from Nicky Hager’s book about the rise and fall of Don Brash (don’t mention the Masons). We rarely see local political plays of this sophistication – Harry Rickets, New Zealand Listener, December 29-January 4 2008.

MPs have stepped back from proposals that would have lifted secrecy
surrounding party donations….

I will be talking tonight about the history and characteristics of propaganda, starting with the WWII versions as seen in the “Towards the Precipice” poster exhibition here at the museum and moving on to contemporary examples that together help us to understand the world we live in.

I would like to propose a New Year’s resolution for news organisations: sorting out the difference between genuine media commentators and giving regular media space to political party spin doctors….

The book shows the internal working of New Zealand’s main conservative party (the National Party) from the election of a new leader, through two years of election campaigning, up to that leaders demise. Based on 1000s of internal communications, strategy papers, itineraries and meeting minutes, it gives an unprecedented insight into modern politics. After exposing numerous lies told to the public, revealing the cynical use of racism to woo redneck voters, secret relations with millionaire donors and much more, the party leader resigned on the day the book was published.

• Order a copy
• Read the Preface
• Read the first chapter
• Nicky Hager speech notes for launching book
• Nicky Hager releases further National Party information 28 November 2006