The National MP once rattled Sir John Key so badly in a mock leaders' debate, the trial run had to be halted so the future Prime Minister didn't lose his confidence.
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Gordon Jon Thompson, the former Chief of Staff to Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, has been hired to do PR for NZ Bus during the driver strike. In a statement on Thursday, NZ Bus chief executive Jay Zmijewski said the company had been left with “no option but to issue the lockout notice “in response to the strike action, the disruption we have been experiencing, and the threat of further ‘surprise attack strikes’ by the union”. NZ Bus is owned by Australian private equity firm Next Capital, which acquired it for $229 million in 2018. He had the role while her intended chief of staff Mike Munro was on medical leave.
Killer quake: Sir John Key reflects on NZ s darkest day
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Sir John Key was Prime Minister when his hometown, Christchurch, was devastated in the February 22, 2011 earthquake. He was dropped into the still shaking, cracked chaos of New Zealand s darkest day . Ten years on, he reflects on those horrific first 24 hours, and how a rebuilt Garden City could become our own Silicon Valley. Kurt Bayer reports.
The meeting, high on the ninth floor of the Beehive paused to ride out the shaking. Everyone stopped talking, looking at each other. Once it stopped, discussion resumed.
But moments later, Prime Minister John Key s trusty chief of staff Wayne Eagleson stuck his head in the door.