New Zealanders are too complacent about the continuing erosion of their right to know what government is doing on their behalf. Political risk has become a primary consideration in whether official information requests will be met, and successive governments have allowed free speech rights to be overridden.

Drawing on decades of experience as a journalist and newspaper editor, Gavin Ellis chronicles these patterns of erosion. It is time, he argues, for New Zealanders to reaffirm their democratic rights or risk further deterioration to freedom of speech and our civic knowledge.

BWB Texts are short books on big subjects by great New Zealand writers. Spanning contemporary issues, history and memoir, new BWB Texts are released regularly, and the series now amounts to well over fifty works.