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Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

BooksJuly 22, 2022

Revealed: the books most borrowed from New Zealand’s parliamentary library

Image: Tina Tiller
Image: Tina Tiller

And why there are no novels on the list.

China and the Pacific. Te tiriti and Aotearoa. Covid. Disinformation. Gangs. And workplace bullying. The weighty issues of our time are reflected in the weighty tomes loaned out by the parliamentary library. Information provided to The Spinoff by the parliamentary library reveals that Contest for the Indo-Pacific: Why China Won’t Map the Future, was the most borrowed book in the first half of 2022. By Rory Medcalf, an Australian diplomat turned academic, it was published in March 2020, but shot to the top of the parliamentary library charts this year as the issues it traverses shot to the top of the news.

Second on the 2022 list of books most borrowed by library users – whose number include MPs, their staff, and staff of the Parliamentary Service and Office of the Clerk – is former National minister Chris Finlayson’s He Kupu Taurangi: Treaty settlements and the future of Aotearoa New Zealand. Fifth is another topic of the moment, in the form of Information Wars: How We Lost the Global Battle Against Disinformation & What We Can Do About It by a former high-ranking US government official, Richard Stengel.

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Disappointingly, the parliamentary library no longer stacks novels on its shelves. When I last undertook this exercise, nine years ago, for the Listener, the top 10 for the eight years to 2013 included titles by Marian Keyes, Lee Child and Alexander McCall Smith (Nicky Hager’s The Hollow Men was number one).

“The Library stopped collecting and loaning fiction in 2014,” a library spokesperson told me, with – I am choosing to imagine – a wistful sigh. “As the collection exists to support the work of parliament the library decided that fiction was outside our scope. We closed the fiction collection in 2014 and offered the items to New Zealand libraries.”

As all library lovers know, poets – Lee Child among them – are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Just as there’s a parliamentary gym, there should be the material to exercise parliamentarians’ – and staffers’ – imaginations. The evacuation of the fiction collection is accordingly a terrible idea which can only impoverish our democracy and should be reversed immediately. 


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Memoir features highly across the annual top 10 lists, with Marilyn Waring topping the pops in 2019 and Holly Walker in 2017. Judith Collins makes fourth on 2020, but there’s no sign of Simon Bridges, who will have to convince himself that his colleagues simply had to buy a copy. 

In 2020, parliamentary readers looked to history to understand what was going on, with the story of the 1918 pandemic and “New Zealand’s worst public health disaster” the most loaned book. In 2017, a collection of “great speeches in history” makes the list – reflecting, perhaps, the oratorical ambitions of the new intake. In 2018, Michael Wolff’s jaw-dropping Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House was first, ahead of Jonathan Boston’s study of social investment.

A couple of other titles that stick out: Workplace Bullying in 2017 and Beyond Burnout in 2020. 

And a bouquet to everyone who put Scotty Morrison’s Māori Made Easy in the top 10 three years in a row. 

2022 

(1/01/2022-07/06/2022)

  1. Contest for the Indo-Pacific: why China won’t map the future – Rory Medcalf
  2. He kupu taurangi: treaty settlements and the future of Aotearoa New Zealand – Christopher Finlayson and James Christmas
  3. Aging in a changing world: older New Zealanders and contemporary multiculturalism – Molly George
  4. The political economy of public administration: institutional choice in the public sector – Murray J Horn
  5. Information wars: how we lost the global battle against disinformation & what we can do about it – Richard Stengel
  6. Towards democratic renewal: ideas for constitutional change in New Zealand – Geoffrey Palmer and Andrew Butler, with assistance from Scarlet Roberts
  7. The little blue book: the essential guide to thinking and talking Democratic – George Lakoff and Elisabeth Wehling
  8. Members and ministers in the New Zealand Parliament – compiled by Bernadette Thakur
  9. Housing allowances in comparative perspective – edited by Peter A Kemp
  10. The first 50 years: a history of the New Zealand National Party – Barry Gustafson

2021

  1. Women in the House: members of parliament in New Zealand – Janet McCallum
  2. Gangland – Jared Savage
  3. Lonely Century: how to restore human connection in a world that’s pulling apart – Noreena Hertz
  4. The Covid Chronicles: lessons from New Zealand – Paul Little
  5. Beyond Burnout: a New Zealand guide: how to spot it, stop it and stamp it out – Suzi McAlpine
  6. In Search of Consensus: New Zealand’s Electoral Act 1956 and its constitutional legacy – Elizabeth McLeay
  7. Māori Made Easy: for everyday learners of the Māori language – Scotty Morrison
  8. National at 80: the story of the New Zealand National Party – by Colin James
  9. The Procedure of the House of Commons: a study of its history and present form by Josef Redlich; translated from the German by A Ernest Steinthal; with an introduction and a supplementary chapter by Sir Courtenay Ilbert
  10. Politics and the Media – edited by Geoff Kemp, Babak Bahador, Kate McMillan and Chris Rudd

2020

  1. Black Flu 1918: the story of New Zealand’s worst public health disaster – Geoffrey W Rice
  2. Māori made easy: for everyday learners of the Māori language – Scotty Morrison
  3. Doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist – Kate Raworth
  4. Pull No Punches: memoir of a political survivor – Judith Collins
  5. The Political Years – Marilyn Waring
  6. The Business of People: leadership for the changing world – Iain Fraser, Madeleine Taylor
  7. How to Escape from Prison – Dr Paul Wood
  8. Erskine May’s treatise on the law, privileges, proceedings and usage of Parliament – Erskine May
  9. New Zealand Government and Politics – Janine Hayward
  10. = Promises, promises: 80 years of wooing New Zealand voters – Claire Robinson; 10.= Antisocial media: how Facebook disconnects us and undermines democracy – Siva Vaidhyanathan

2019

  1. The political years – Marilyn Waring
  2. Marijuana legalization: what everyone needs to know – Jonathan P Caulkins, Beau Kilmer, and Mark AR Kleiman
  3. Government for the public good: the surprising science of large-scale collective action – Max Rashbrooke
  4. How to be a parliamentary researcher – Robert Dale
  5. Building the New Zealand dream – Gael Ferguson
  6. Public policy in New Zealand: institutions, processes and outcomes – Richard Shaw and Chris Eichbaum
  7. How to escape from prison – Dr Paul Wood
  8. Māori made easy: for everyday learners of the Māori language – Scotty Morrison.
  9. Promises, promises: 80 years of wooing New Zealand voters – by Claire Robinson
  10. Parliamentary practice in New Zealand – editors Mary Harris, David Wilson; assistant editors David Bagnall, Pavan Sharman

2018

  1. Fire and Fury: inside the Trump White House – by Michael Wolff
  2. Social Investment: a New Zealand policy experiment – by Jonathan Boston
  3. Which Two Heads Are Better than One?: how diverse teams create breakthrough ideas and make smarter decisions – by Juliet Bourke
  4. The House: New Zealand’s House of Representatives, 1854-2004 – by John E Martin
  5. The Whole Intimate Mess: motherhood, politics, and women’s writing – Holly Walker
  6. The Write style guide
  7. Post-truth – Lee McIntyre
  8. By Design: a brief history of the Public Works Department, Ministry of Works, 1870-1970 – Rosslyn J Noonan
  9. Saints and Stirrers: Christianity, conflict and peacemaking in New Zealand, 1814-1945 – edited by Geoffrey Troughton
  10. Reform: a memoir – Geoffrey Palmer

2017

  1. The Whole Intimate Mess: motherhood, politics, and women’s writing – Holly Walker
  2. Protecting Paradise: 1080 and the fight to save New Zealand’s wildlife – Dave Hansford
  3. Lean In: women, work, and the will to lead – Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell
  4. Lend Me Your Ears: great speeches in history – selected and introduced by William Safire
  5. Workplace Bullying – Frank Darby, Andrew Scott-Howman
  6. Child poverty in New Zealand – Jonathan Boston & Simon Chapple
  7. John Key: Portrait of a Prime Minister – John Roughan
  8. Democracy in New Zealand – Raymond Miller
  9. New Zealand Government and Politics – Janine Hayward
  10. Bridled Power: New Zealand’s constitution and government – Geoffrey Palmer and Matthew Palmer

2016

  1. Moments of Truth: the New Zealand general election of 2014 – edited by Jon Johansson and Stephen Levine
  2. The Girl with Seven Names: a North Korean defector’s story – Hyeonseo Lee with David John
  3. Parliamentarians’ Professional Development: the need for reform – Colleen Lewis, Ken Coghill, editors
  4. The Advantage: why organizational health trumps everything else in business – Patrick Lencioni
  5. Richard Seddon: King of God’s own: the life and times of New Zealand’s longest-serving Prime Minister – Tom Brooking
  6. New Zealand Government and Politics – edited by Raymond Miller
  7. Constitutional Conventions in Westminster systems: controversies, changes and challenges – edited by Brian Galligan and Scott Brenton
  8. The House: New Zealand’s House of Representatives, 1854-2004 – John E. Martin
  9. Helen Clark: inside stories – Claudia Pond Eyley and Dan Salmon
  10. Māori and Parliament: diverse strategies and compromises – edited by Maria Bargh

20052013

  1. The Hollow Men: A Study in the Politics of Deception – Nicky Hager
  2. Bridled Power: New Zealand’s Constitution and Government – Geoffrey Palmer
  3. One Good Turn: A Jolly Murder Mystery – Kate Atkinson
  4. The Hour Game – David Baldacci
  5. My Sister’s Keeper – Jodi Picoult
  6. Parliamentary Practice in New Zealand – David McGee
  7. The Other Side of the Story – Marian Keyes
  8. Persuader – Lee Child
  9. Tears of the Giraffe – Alexander McCall Smith
  10. Political Animals: Confessions of a Parliamentary Zoologist – Jane Clifton
Keep going!
Photograph of middle-aged man in suit, staring into distance with chin lifted high. Our focus is on him but there are other suited dudes in foreground.
October 20, 2021: Todd Muller on his first day back in Parliament after resigning the leadership (Photo: Lynn Grieveson via Getty Images; Design: Tina Tiller)

BooksJuly 20, 2022

‘They clashed like fuckery’: The final straw for Todd Muller

Photograph of middle-aged man in suit, staring into distance with chin lifted high. Our focus is on him but there are other suited dudes in foreground.
October 20, 2021: Todd Muller on his first day back in Parliament after resigning the leadership (Photo: Lynn Grieveson via Getty Images; Design: Tina Tiller)

In this excerpt from her new book Blue Blood, political journalist Andrea Vance post-mortems the last, haywire days of Muller’s leadership.

Todd Muller took over as National Party leader on 22 May, 2020. The panic attacks started during his first week on the job and worsened through an extraordinary series of crises: you might recall his MAGA cap, his very Pākehā front bench and upside-down tino rangatiratanga flag, and finally the convoluted episode in which Clutha-Southland MP Hamish Walker leaked the names and quarantine locations of 18 Covid patients. A staffer called that saga “a clusterfuck of biblical proportions”.

The Hamish Walker episode left Muller bruised and exhausted. His mental health was crumbling. “We didn’t see his absolute stress,” Lawrence Yule says. “Once I asked him how it was going. He said: ‘I go from white-hot fear to everything’s brilliant. And everything in between.’”

Muller was tipped into crisis the weekend following Walker’s resignation. Those around Muller point to different events over those two days which ratcheted up the pressure.

“The thing that I think broke the camel’s back was Rio Tinto and the smelter,” one staffer says. The Anglo-Australian mining giant was again threatening to close its aluminium smelter at Tīwai Point on the southern coast of the South Island, putting more than a thousand jobs in Bluff and Invercargill on the line. The smelter is also the biggest consumer of electricity, using roughly 13% of the country’s power. Rio Tinto had previously threatened to close operations, and it was widely viewed as a tactic in negotiating for a cut-price electricity deal in an election year.

“Nikki [Kaye, Muller’s deputy] was convinced that it was real and that National should ride to the fucking rescue,” a staffer says. She wanted Muller to fly into Invercargill, meet the workers and promise they’d keep their jobs under a National government. Gerry Brownlee, as a former energy minister, advisor Tim Hurdle, and Matthew Hooton, who had previously held Rio Tinto as a client, advised against it. “Hurdle had this line: don’t get between the government and a problem. They all said that we should shut up and let the government explain why all these people lose their jobs.”

But Kaye was insistent. “The woman just keeps going,” another staffer says. “It’s a double-edged sword. Where others would give up because it was hopeless, Nikki keeps going. And that became a problem. There were nine of us versus Nikki.”

Muller said he must back his deputy. “Normally it’s the other way around,” the staffer sighs. Hurdle was sent home to come up with a speech and a policy. Hooton was ordered to start working on a speech on Chris Bishop’s new transport infrastructure policy for Auckland, which was to be delivered on Monday. Muller also went north, to spend time with his in-laws in the east Auckland suburb Stonefields.

Insiders point to Kaye and Hooton’s volatile relationship as the tipping point. “They clashed like fuckery. It was incredible,” one aide says. Both rang Muller to complain, and both threatened to quit. The leader, already under extreme pressure, had to mollify and arbitrate between them both.

Cover of Blue Blood showing four leaders John Key, Simon Bridges, Todd Muller and Judith Collins.
(Image: Supplied)

Others put the blame on Kaye’s decision to front for a television interview to explain the Walker saga. It was Muller who was invited to appear on TVNZ’s Sunday politics show Q+A. He declined, recognising there was no upside to another interrogation of what he knew about the Covid-19 patient leak. His answers would be sliced and diced into soundbites, dragging the story out into the high-rating evening news bulletin. Kaye saw it differently. Ignoring advice from both advisors and Brownlee and a direct order from Muller, she fronted up to the show. The appearance was – as one MP coarsely put it – “a shit show”.

Kaye was forced to deny that National had once again embroiled itself in “dirty politics”. She faced questions about what she’d been told by Boag, and the links to her re-election campaign. Looking back, she defended her decision: “Todd was having time with his family and that was the message I had. I had committed to it … and I thought it was really important to talk through what had occurred, and that is the way I have always operated in my political career: to front up. I think that’s the right thing to do.”

Muller could no longer cope. “In the end the frequency and intensity of the panic attacks took me to a place where I had to step away from the fire, the anxiety and the pain.” As one staffer says: “That weekend everything just melted down, for everybody.”

Calls and emails to Muller went unanswered. The team suspected he was suffering a nervous breakdown and cancelled the policy launch, citing a stomach bug. His chief of staff Megan Campbell flew to Auckland on the Monday to see what she could do.

Brownlee was in Napier campaigning with Katie Nimon, a well-thought-of candidate who was challenging Labour’s Stuart Nash. They spent the day touring local businesses in the heart of the art deco city. After a long day on the hustings Nimon and Brownlee joined former Hawke’s Bay ministers Chris Tremain and Craig Foss, and local MP Lawrence Yule, for craft beers at the Westshore Beach Inn. At 4pm Brownlee’s phone rang. It was Campbell calling to say Muller had suffered “an incident” and would be relinquishing the leadership. Brownlee said, “Aw, he’s just tired,” and flew immediately to Auckland to try and talk him around. “It was a pretty broken situation,” the staffer says.

Campbell, Brownlee and Wilson worked long into the night drafting a press release announcing Muller’s resignation, effective from the following morning. “It has become clear to me that I am not the best person to be Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the New Zealand National Party at this critical time for New Zealand,” it said. “It is more important than ever that the New Zealand National Party has a leader who is comfortable in the role. The role has taken a heavy toll on me personally, and on my family, and this has become untenable from a health perspective.”

A conference call was held to inform a small inner circle, sometime after 9pm on Monday. Muller did not attend. The rest of the party was blindsided when the news was made public at 7.30am on Tuesday. Kaye and Adams followed him out the door, both resigning on Thursday. It drew a line under a chaotic 53 days within the Opposition Leader’s office. But the party was again thrown into turmoil and the MPs were furious. “I remember thinking: it is all over. Why don’t we just concede right now?” a senior MP says. “Todd will justify it in all sorts of ways, but he has got no concept of how much damage that did to so many people who were working so hard.”

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Another MP says it was a deeply stressful time for everyone. “Todd didn’t look like he was enjoying it. You have got to want the job, and he overworked himself or he let himself be overworked.” An MP loyal to Bridges rages: “The problems for us started with Jami-Lee Ross. Then we had a coup that should never have happened.”

With just 67 days until polling closed, senior party figures and MPs began calling the person they believed to be their only viable alternative. A caucus meeting was hastily organised in Wellington. At the eleventh hour Judith Collins was ready to take the job she had coveted for almost 20 years.


Andrea Vance talks to Toby Manhire about the book, its revelations, and Luxon’s challenge in this episode of The Spinoff’s politics podcast Gone By Lunchtime.

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Blue Blood: The Inside Story of the National Party in Crisis by Andrea Vance (Harper Collins, $35) is available from Unity Books Auckland and Wellington.

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