That involved proving that it had been seen, handled or even accidentally brushed by either a minister or a ministerial staffer after the Government was sworn in.
So suddenly a humble staff member who reduced the document from 38 pages to 33 pages by reducing the font size – a two-step process on a computer – has become a Person of Interest.
National spent much of Thursday in a fruitless attempt to get Peters to say if the staffer was now a ministerial staffer, a process involving alibis and split-second timing between the staffers' typing skills and the Government being sworn in.
It then moved on to the safe Peters has said the document is now entombed in and whether it was altered before or after being put into that safe.
This prompted Peters to come up with a new verb – he declared the document was "fonted down" prior to going into the safe.
Like a good piece of art, the document appears to mean different things to different people.
Peters first described it back in October as "a document of precision on various areas of policy commitment and development" which set out how the coalition would work and included directives to ministers.
On Monday Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern denied it was anything quite so grand as a document, dismissing it as merely "notes" that the Government may or may not revisit, depending on its mood.
By Question Time on Tuesday for Ardern it was "a series of documents" and for Peters part of "a dynamic plan for the future on which we are working."
In response to National's questioning, Ardern has had to dance on the head of a pin to try to ensure nobody ever saw or did anything with the document in their capacity as ministers.
Peters had already admitted some of his ministers had the paper – but claimed it did not count as they had not been ministers when they were given it.
Asked the same question, Ardern denied passing it on to either officials or ministers in her capacity as Prime Minister.
It had not been forwarded to any ministers before they were sworn in and the Prime Minister could not be held responsible for what the Leader of the Labour Party might have done.
Asked if the Finance Minister Grant Robertson had the document, she said the "member for Wellington Central" was part of the negotiations so would be privy to such things.
Ardern also put up a decoy – determined to prove her Government had cling film levels of transparency by releasing a Cabinet Paper on re-negotiations of the Trans Pacific Partnership.
But the people only want what they haven't got – and that was the 33-page paper.
Ardern sought to regain the moral high ground by twice declaring she was more than happy for the Ombudsman to consider whether it should be released.
Given Newsroom had already appealed the refusal to release it to the Ombudsman, it is not as if she had much choice.
For onlookers there has been the added bonus of watching Parliament's veteran Peters being schooled by the comparatively inexperienced Ardern.
Asked if the Staffer of Font Sizes was employed by Ministerial Services when the document was changed, Ardern can clearly be heard telling Peters to say "Parliamentary Services."
Peters then stood and said that at the time it was Parliamentary Services – which is exempt from the Official Information Act. How convenient.
