What happened at Todd Muller’s media standup?

Thursday, July 9, Christchurch

Media: Have you sought assurances from your MPs that they knew nothing about data either held by Hamish Walker or Michelle Boag?

Muller: No, look that issue is sorted from my perspective. Obviously Hamish has made his decision and an inquiry is following up with Michelle Boag and as you saw she has made it clear publicly that her only interaction was with Hamish and no doubt that will get confirmed to the process with Michael Heron, QC.

Media: So Michelle Boag has never mentioned or offered this data to you or to any other National MP?

Muller: Look from my perspective I am just going to repeat from my perspective that issue is concluded. She has made it very clear there was a contact with Hamish. I have made it very clear my view of that. Hamish has paid an extraordinary price for passing that information on. And now of course, Michael Heron will have his conversations with those two people . . .

Media: Was Michelle Boag a source for Michael Woodhouse? Have you spoken to him?

Muller: No. Look, again, I don’t really understand where you are going with this. We’ve had a situation over the last 48 hours. It is very clear that I think it was totally inappropriate what occurred and Hamish Walker has now paid the price in terms of a political career and Michelle Boag has resigned from all roles in the National Party and has confirmed publicly that she has had a single engagement with Hamish Walker over it and now is co-operating and is working through with Michael Heron so from my perspective that is the issue…

Media: I just want to get clarity about what exactly you have said to MPs about that privacy leak. So have you checked with Woodhouse specifically whether he received that same information from Boag?

Muller: Ah no.

Media: Why not?

Muller: Well, because it’s very clear from our perspective that there is a conversation that has a occurred or a connection that’s occurred between Michelle Boag and Hamish Walker.

Media: So you don’t know whether other MPs in your party have access to that information because you haven’t checked. Is that accurate?

Muller: No, we’ve got a scenario here where from our perspective we are confident that from what we can see that the issue here relates to Michelle Boag and Hamish Walker.

Media: What gives you that confidence because you’ve just said you haven’t checked.

Muller: Yeah but from our perspective, the issue is what was done with the information and clearly it was an issue from our perspective that was unacceptable and you’ve herd very clearly from the participants that the issue was between Michelle Boag and Hamish Walker.