New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key Smiles After the General Election in Auckland.
New Zealand's Prime Minister John Key smiles after the general election in Auckland November 26, 2011. Reuters/Stringer

Nicky Hager, the author of controversial book "Dirty Politics" will get the support of a high-powered legal team in challenging the search warrant used by police in raiding his house. The book had rocked New Zealand politics during the election campaign and was regarded as a saga on the "poison of attack politics in New Zealand". The book tried to expose explicit information as to how PM Mr. John Key's office staffers allegedly resorted to smear campaigns against political rivals using hired bloggers and supplied them with privileged official information.

Last month, the police raided Hager's residence in the guise of looking for the hacker Rawshark who released the confidential e-mails between the blogger Cameron Slater and a few staffers in the PM's office.

Legal Team

Hager will be backed by a legal team, led by Julian Miles QC in filing papers in the High Court next week, seeking a judicial review of the search warrant that enabled the police to seize Hager's computers and personal files from his Wellington home.

Media lawyer Steven Price and barrister Felix Geiringer are also part of the team. The Hager support cell is boosted by public funding of $80,000 raised in New Zealand and abroad. Media lawyer Price, said the judicial review was vital as one of the two components in the case to examine whether the warrant to search Hager's home did violate the provisions on source privacy. Hager's case will be that the police did not properly consider his right to protect confidential sources. It is not just about the hacker Rawshark but involves dozens of other sources.

Also society expects that people had the right to pass on information in line with the freedom of expression. The search warrant has infringed the freedom with which people would do so. The other strand of the case will be seeking of High Court's intervention to decide on the rights of access for the police to the material seized during the search. Hager will claim journalistic privilege over the material.

Public Opinion Divided

Despite the legal remedy sought by Hager, NZ Herald reports that David Jones QC, an expert on media laws, said the issue of journalists using unlawfully obtained material can also be construed as a criminal act and it would be stained by the crime committed to obtain it. He said "public interest" did not mean a blanket permission to invade privacy and commit crime and disseminate that information.

Law Professor Ursula Cheer from University of Canterbury said the "public good" of the "Dirty Politics" disclosures would be argued in the court on the matter of protecting the source. She feared that the chilling effect of revealing the source's identity would mean that in the future no public interest would be served. The police search was conducted after a complaint from blogger Cameron Slater, whose hacked email conversations formed the crux of "Dirty Politics".