Todd Muller’s poisoned chalice runneth over

If “be careful what you wish for” is a tired cliche, then National Party leader Todd Muller must have invigorated it this week. His successful tilt at the helm of New Zealand’s centre-right party on May 22 has handed him a seemingly bottomless poisoned chalice.

As the scandal around the leaked confidential Covid patient details claimed the careers of former party president Michelle Boag and Southland MP Hamish Walker, Muller may have wondered why he put his hand up.

It has been 50 bruising days, compounded yesterday by MP Michael Woodhouse’s revelations he too had received confidential patient information from Boag.

Woodhouse’s disclosure dropped Muller “right in it”, to use the vernacular, as the party leader had earlier been specifically asked

Muller was given the opportunity to come clean . . . and he failed to do so.

whether the MP was involved and replied: “The issue here relates to Michelle Boag and Hamish Walker.”

Muller was given the opportunity to come clean on how widely the highly sensitive information was shared around his MPs, and he failed to do so. As images appeared on social media this week of deposed leader Simon Bridges taking a pastoral interlude with baby yaks, Muller could have been forgiven for wishing he was there too.