KEY POINTS:
National leader John Key is continuing to refuse to disclose which consultants his party hires, saying a "vindictive" Labour Government would deny them business.
He has also ruled out someone within the party being to blame for leaks and is pointing the finger at the Parliamentary Service.
At the weekend, investigative author Nicky Hager reported Mr Key had hired Australian political strategy company Crosby/Textor.
The company had courted controversy for tactics including push polling, designed to influence voters.
Hager's report included diary-type references and dates and details of Mr Key's meetings.
Yesterday, Mr Key raised the issue with the Parliamentary Service.
Hager wrote The Hollow Men based on 475 stolen or leaked emails from former leader Don Brash which led to him leaving Parliament. A police investigation found no evidence of hacking and Hager has always maintained the emails were leaked to him by National Party sources.
Mr Key said he was not "overly worried" about potential future releases of party information. But "any company's email system that is exposed to the public can be portrayed in a way that is deemed to be negative," he told Breakfast on TV One.
"We deserve to have confidentiality only because I think every organisation deserves that and unfortunately Parliamentary Services can't give us that."
He did not believe anyone in National would assist Hager.
Mr Key continued to refuse to state whether National used Crosby/Textor. He said a "vindictive" Labour Government would stop using any consultants that National also hired.
"We're not denying we use consultants for focus groups and we're not denying we use consultants for polling," he said. "We won't be asking our consultants to do things that clearly Labour are. We have ruled out push polling, Labour have not."
Prime Minister Helen Clark said she was happy to name the consultants Labour used - UMR for polling, Brian Edwards for media training and whoever ended up helping with the election advertising campaign.
To the best of her knowledge Labour did not hire political strategists.
- NZPA
