Tonight - Robert Muldoon interview

Like many other current affairs shows in the 70s, Tonight had a fairly brief existence, but it provided the forum for this infamous battle of wills between journalist Simon Walker and Prime Minister Robert Muldoon. It is May 1976, and Walker is daring to interrogate Muldoon about his claims of a Soviet naval presence in the Pacific, and New Zealand's vulnerability to Russian nuclear attack. Muldoon grows increasingly annoyed and bullish at being asked questions that are not on his sheet: "I will not have some smart alec interviewer changing the rules half way through."

I will not have some smart alec interviewer changing the rules half way through.

– Prime Minister Robert Muldoon to Simon Walker

Key Cast & Crew

Simon Walker

Interviewer

David Harry Baldock

Director

Robert Boyd-Bell

Producer

David McKinney

Associate Producer