In her monthly column for the NZ Herald (which is a few days early), Lucy looks at politics in New Zealand and how a book called "Dirty Politics" is creating all sorts of issues. This is such a well written article. You can buy the book from Amazon (Kindle version although it's a little pricey at $21)
You can read Lucy article by clicking on the thumbnail
or
read it online on New Zealand Herald site
I don't know a lot about New Zealand politics so I turned to Wikipedia to find out why this book is causing such a stir (and why it's the basis of Lucy's column)
Wiki says:
About the book:
Dirty politics: How attack politics is poisoning New Zealand's political environment is a book by Nicky Hager published in August 2014. The book features leaked emails between National Party figures and right-wing bloggers.
Among the claims in the book, Hager said, are that during the 2011 election campaign a right-wing blogger, Cameron Slater, who is the son of former National Party President John Slater,[1] obtained a database of Labour Party members, emails and donations which were used to attack the Labour Party. Also in 2011 the PM's office used its knowledge of secret SIS documents to tip off a right-wing blogger and arrange an attack on Labour leader Phil Goff, and drafted Official Information Act requests for a right-wing blogger to use in other attacks.
The book also presents evidence which suggests that Justice Minister Judith Collins leaked the name of public servant Simon Pleasants to Cameron Slater. Collins suspected Pleasants of releasing information through his job at the Department of Internal Affairs which was embarrassing for Finance Minister Bill English. Once his name was leaked to Slater, Pleasants subsequently received death threats. Pleasants denies ever leaking any information about English. Once the book was published, there was pressure for Collins to resign, with English saying "it's not a style I like" and Key called her actions "unwise".[3] Political reporter Andrea Vance commented that in light of Dirty Politics: "Almost everyone in the political sphere assumes Collins will be demoted post-election."[4]
It has also been discovered that in a file held by the New Zealand Herald newspaper, hundreds of messages were sent from people working on ministerial or government computers to the comments section of Cameron Slater's WhaleOil blog. The messages are linked to the government servers and IP addresses from which they were posted. The file also links those details with email addresses.