KEY POINTS:
Former National Party leader Don Brash says it is "quite appalling" that taxpayers' money is funding a play based on Nicky Hager's book The Hollow Men, derived from material he believes is stolen.
The book is based on correspondence to Dr Brash, mainly emails, about his challenge to Bill English's leadership of National and the party's strategy ahead of the 2005 campaign.
Creative New Zealand has given $38,000 towards the production of the play in September in Wellington.
Dr Brash said yesterday that "only the most naive could imagine that this financial support by a Government agency has nothing to do with the fact that the Government is desperate to find something, anything, to slow National's rise in the polls".
"I regard Hager's use of stolen emails as totally outrageous and of the utmost seriousness for the ability of the public to communicate with politicians in the reasonable expectation that their correspondence will be treated in confidence."
Dr Brash said he regarded Hager's contention that the emails had been handed over by people who had a legitimate right to have them "as absolute crap".
The emails had been used to create an impression "which was grossly distorted", he said. How the emails got into Hager's hands is the subject of an ongoing police investigation.
Among the characters in the play, written by Dean Parker, are Dr Brash, former advisers Peter Keenan, Mathew Hooton and Bryan Sinclair, and businesswoman Diane Foreman.
