Ringside

Mike Munro spent nearly 22 years working inside the political domain in Wellington. He reported on politics from the parliamentary press gallery for 10 years and then switched to the dark side, becoming the only person to serve as chief press secretary to one Labour prime minister, and later as chief of staff to another. His days as a political journalist coincided with a tumultuous period of change, starting with the ousting from office of the formidable and polarising Robert Muldoon and his National government in 1984, followed by the sweeping reform programme led firstly by the David Lange-led Labour government Munro then became a cross-code convert, signing on as Labour leader Helen Clark's chief press secretary, four years before Clark became prime minister at the end of 1999. He was Clark's media boss for 10 years. He returned in 2017 to join Labour leader Jacinda Ardern's team for post-election coalition talks, and then went into the Prime Minister's Office as Ardern's chief of staff, a position he filled for 18 months. In this memoir, Munro provides insights into events and personalities that dominated his time as a political poacher and then gamekeeper: the fall of Muldoon, the rise and then collapse of the Lange government, the ins and outs of press gallery life, the bruising leadership contests, the troubles and then triumphs of the Clark years, the personalities he got to see close up, and the flowering of the Ardern government before it was engulfed by the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It's a story that traverses an unfading time in New Zealand politics.