Regardless it's argued the leak did no more than jump the gun, since - if the PM is to be believed, as only stated after the fact - the report was to be made public anyway.
But frankly Dunne has never struck me as more than a well-coiffed empty vessel, filled variously with whatever political wind suits his ego and his sense of self-preservation. Certainly it's difficult to label him, as many casually do, as "a decent honest sort" when his integrity is undermined by backflips: recently, supporting asset sales that included hydro power and water rights after campaigning stridently against the sale of water assets.
However, if this security fracas is a fatal blunder it may be because (as is strongly hinted) his motive stemmed from a lower denominator: lust.
Ironically Dunne's situation and the report's details have been overshadowed and largely made redundant by the confessions of one Edward Snowden, a now-former contract employee of the CIA.
Snowden's revelations of a massive US National Security Agency intelligence-gathering programme called Prism and the secret use of allied "partners" to spy and report on each other's citizens is Orwell's Big Brother made manifest.
"We can plant bugs in machines. Once you go on the network, I can identify your machine," says Snowden.
"If I wanted to see your emails or your wife's phone, all I have to do is use intercepts.
"I can get your emails, passwords, phone records, credit cards."
Clearly the GCSB, through the running of the Waihopai interception facility and its involvement in the so-called Five Eyes intelligence network, linked to Prism, is data-mining not for our own security but on behalf of a conglomerate of foreign powers - namely the US, Australia, Britain and Canada.
Since most of the world's data either routes via, reports to, or is stored in the US, and Prism also allegedly taps the data of all the major social sites and search engines, a significant majority of ALL data is captured within a purpose-built facility in Bluffdale, Utah, ready for any spook to run any recognition software through: words, phone calls, locations, associates, records and links of all types are laid bare by the asking.
As Bradley Manning's leaks showed up the duplicity of the US in the Middle East, so Snowden's have confirmed what advocates of liberty have long feared: a secret intelligence network that can finger anyone, any time, anywhere, for anything deemed "counter" to the prevailing power elite.
Result?
In the new authoritarian order, revolution will become unthinkable - nipped in the bud as soon as it is rumoured. Consider that with care.
As Snowden says, "You will never be safe whatever protections you put in place."
Unlike Manning and Snowden, whose actions were selfless, Dunne's are merely opportune; and a right call for the wrong reasons may mean his time is done.
That's the right of it.
Bruce Bisset is a freelance writer and poet.
