About the Author

After three years as a student journalist and editor at Auckland University, JOHN HARVEY joined the Auckland Star as a reporter in 1966. He subsequently worked in Brisbane and as a features writer and London sports editor for Westminster Press in Fleet Street. In 1973 he joined the Manawatu Standard, and was an award-winning editor of that newspaper between 1985 and 1999. He worked in Parliament as a press secretary from late 1999 to 2012. He has written books on All Black Bull Allen and on Manawatu, and contributed to a number of journalism texts. He is married to Judy McGregor, and has one son by a former marriage. BRENT EDWARDS has been a journalist for 36 years and has covered politics since 1989 when he started work in the parliamentary press gallery for the Evening Post. He became political editor before joining Radio New Zealand as economics correspondent in 2001. He went back to the press gallery in 2006 as RNZ’s political editor, before becoming director of news in 2015, a job he left two years later. Brent lives in Porirua with his wife Katherine. They have three adult sons.