Editorial: Election race getting murkier

Author Nicky Hager at the launch of his latest book, Dirty Politics.

If Kim Dotcom thought he was going to be the only one lobbing grenades into this year's election race he now knows the answer is no.

Mr Dotcom last month said he would drop a "political bomb" just days out from the September 20 election that would prove Prime Minister John Key misled the public.

It remains to be seen whether his bombshell will outblast that dropped this week by author Nicky Hager, whose book Dirty Politics: How Attack Politics is Poisoning New Zealand's Political Environment has caused a major stir in political circles, social media and the blogosphere.

Among other things, Mr Hager's book claims Mr Key's Government uses blogs, including Cameron Slater's Whale Oil Beef Hooked, to disseminate smears and scandals it does not want to be associated with.

Much of the content came from hacked emails from the Whale Oil blog. Mr Hager says he understands a number of hackers were involved in getting the information, which was passed on to him.

Clearly Mr Hager sees this as a case of the ends justifying the means.

But however unsavoury the method of information retrieval, that does not excuse any of the alleged inappropriate or anti-democratic behaviour revealed.

They are now two or more separate issues.

John Key says he won't read the book before the election. Why on Earth not? There are serious allegations against his staff and administration.

I don't think anyone was overly surprised to hear that politicians share tips with like-minded bloggers - but Mr Hager's claims reach well beyond that.

With just five weeks until the election it's hard to imagine we will get the full picture behind the allegations and counter-allegations before we vote.

And we still have Kim Dotcom's September 15 revelation to come.

Dirty politics indeed - this is turning out to be the murkiest election campaign yet.