June 8, 2013

Wow, did I get that wrong

I was really sure the Kitteridge report into the GCSB was a strategic leak by the Prime Minister’s office, and so it would never be properly investigated. It wasn’t, so it was, and the leak came from one of the PM’s coalition partners and senior Ministers leaking against his own government’s media plan, for no apparent reason other than that he liked and wanted to impress the journalist he leaked it to.

Dunne gave a tortured, rambling confession in his press conference while insisting that he didn’t actually leak the document. He just considered leaking it and talked about it with the journalist who the documents were leaked to, and arranged to meet her on the day they were leaked and disappeared from his office during the time he’d arranged to meet with her, but didn’t meet with her, but can’t say where he was.

This pretty silly position could be about a few things, but I wonder if his standing with Key is part of it. Dunne appears to have mislead the Prime Minister, who asked if he leaked the report and received a denial. Maybe Dunne wants to maintain the fiction that he didn’t lie to Key and that he’s resigning on some bizarre point of principle about the privacy of his emails. Did Dunne have some informal exit agreement stitched up with National – a knighthood, a few lucrative directorships, a nice high commisioner role somewhere in Europe – which he thinks he can cling on to?

Update: Deleted the comments thread before Andrea reads it and sues me.