No answer needed in political whodunnit

An inside job? Or "bollocks,'' to use the refreshing vernacular of our Prime Minister?

After all the years of investigation - or non-investigation - into the provinance of the Brash emails, the police have concluded what we expected all along. They don't know.

They suspect, however, that it was an inside job. Their reasoning for this is that the documents held by researcher Nicky Hager included more than just emails; that he knew things that Brash had never committed to email; that the documents were obtained over a long period of time rather than a one-off event; and that hacking of the Parliamentary server was "highly unlikley''.

I think on the last point the police are wrong. From what I know, anyone with a user name and password can access the parliamentary system whenever and whereever they like. I also know that the service uses several outside contractors to manage its IT system, many of whom are able to access the system (although obviously they are not supposed to).

So it's indeed possible to hack into the Parliamentary server. But I don't agree that this is how Hager got those emails and other documents.

When you look at the entire history of the saga, add in Brash's propensity to print out all his electronic communications, the animosity that existed within parts of the National Party caucus at the time,  and the virtual open warfare between Brash and the man he rolled, Bill English, a leak certainly wouldn't be out of the question.

"Bollocks'' is John Key's response. He has always been firmly of the view that the information was hacked and that any suggestion that one of his own could have been involved is "fiction put out by the Left''.

Key told his weekly post-Cabinet press conference yesterday that: "There's no question other people had access to that system. It's a statement of fact. There are contractors that had access to that system.'' 

He added: "I'm not in the process of sending dodgy emails but at the end of the day someone can always cut and paste and break into the system.''

True. But that person could also be someone - or more than one - within or close to the National Party. The leak of the information, however it occurred, was clearly a political act. It can't be seen any other way.

The police were criticised in the inquiry into their actions for not doing more to solve the riddle. But in my opinion the police were right to see the story mostly as a political one, rather than one requiring their attention.

It's not up to our law enforcement authorities to investigate journalists' sources unless they are needed as evidence in wider criminal wrongdoing. And even then, they can't necessarily expect journalists to cooperate.

While it's always easier and more comforting to see things such as this as being perpetrated by one's political enemies, that's not always the case. Not everyone in National was exactly delighted at Don Brash's use of the Exclusive Brethren during the 2005 election campaign.

If you read Hager's book The Hollow Men there's also a remarkable lack of criticism of Bill English. Now I'm not for a moment suggesting English is behind the leak. But it's possible someone sympathetic to him was.

Whether any actual illegality took place is extremely doubtful. The Crimes Act is pretty vague on whether accessing or forwarding an email is theft, since the definition is based around deprivation of property, not copying information. Even unauthorised access of a computer is borderline, particularly if - as police concluded - security around computers in National's offices was lax.

It's likely that one day the identity of the source will be revealed, as it is in all great political whodunnits. Even Deep Throat came out in the end.

But personally I don't particularly care. I think the fuss over where the information came from can sometimes undermine the actual importance of the story itself. Like Watergate, the information provided was correct, and it had an enormous political impact.

Whatever you think of Nicky Hager and his political leanings, and however the material was obtained, in my opinion the end justified the means.

Hager may have used that material to over-egg the pudding in his book, and drawn inferences about Brash that were unfair. Brash is not a venal character. Nor is he stupid. As for his staff, much of what went on during the 2005 campaign - as far as I could tell, and I covered it - were par for the course for any political party.

But the basic story of the Exclusive Brethren's involvement in National's election campaign and the attempts to cover it up was one that needed to be told.

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