If there was one King’s Birthday honour I that was really pleased to see handed out this past weekend, it was the one given to Nicky Hager.

I realise Nicky is a controversial figure, because Nicky- quite deliberately it would seem- inserts himself and his reporting into election campaigns 

Which means he often becomes the villain to the group of voters supporting the target of his investigation. Whether it’s the supporters of Helen Clark in 2002, or Don Brash in 2006, or probably most recently, John Key in 2014.

But take away his controversial tactic of deliberately publishing and releasing books during a political campaign and just look objectively at what he’s told us that we never knew before.

If it wasn’t for Nicky Hager, we might not know about Five Eyes today.

There are five countries in that security grouping- the UK, the US, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. And of all the journalists in all those countries, it was Nicky Hager who found out about Five Eyes and ended up giving evidence at an inquiry by the European Parliament. 

It was Nicky who told us about Dirty Politics, about our soldiers probably killing civilians in Afghanistan, about Corngate, about the exclusive brethren funding the National Party.

And for that, he’s been subjected to some pretty poor behaviour, including being unlawfully raided by the police. The police apologised publicly, his bank apologised publicly for handing over private information and the spies who were monitoring his phone apologised publicly. 

Nicky Hager seems to have a rare thing that I really admire. Which is not giving a stuff what people think of him and just sticking to his principles and doing what he thinks is right.

I know journalists are not the flavour of the month at the moment, largely because so few of them are actually good at what they do. But Nicky is.

• Nicky Hager taking Police back to court
• National question appointment of Nicky Hager to reference group
• Police pay Nicky Hager 'substantial damages' over Dirty Politics search
• Defence Force denies shocking new allegations from Nicky Hager

If you care about transparency and power being held to account, then you should celebrate a journalist like Nicky Hager doing exactly that. 

In years to come, we will remember the names of very few journalists, but Nicky will be one of them. So that honour is well-deserved. 

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