Fran O'Sullivan: Email affair needs full inquiry

Calling Planet Whitewash: Police Commissioner Howard Broad has appointed a senior investigating officer to undertake a "full review of the Don Brash email case".

This is not because Broad is concerned at the implications for New Zealand democracy that police have not got to the bottom of what was clearly politically motivated theft - designed to wreck the former National leader's prospects at the 2005 election.

Nor is it because the Police Commissioner has become concerned by the flow of information into the public domain which conclusively shows his officers did not make the Brash emails theft investigation a priority - that would simply have exposed the Commissioner's own questionable judgment in allowing the investigation to be headed up by a Detective-Inspector whose credibility was damaged when he refused to throw the book at former Prime Minister Helen Clark's right-hand woman Heather Simpson over Labour's spending cap breaches because it could ultimately impact on the "integrity" of the 2005 election.

This is a factor which roused Brash's ire over police recalcitrance so much that he wrote to Broad himself in 2006 saying police had failed to live up to the public's expectation in its investigation into Labour's spending cap breaches.

Broad is simply playing defensive tactics. What has finally persuaded the top cop to act is that Brash won't shut up. Brash won't stand for the police arrogance that resulted in him finally being given a heavily censored set of documents relating to Operation Arnold more than a year after being told he would soon receive the final report on the investigation and just weeks after Detective-Inspector Harry Quinn issued a statement headlined "Police close email investigation."

And it's because Brash - driven to frustration over police intransigence - finally mustered up the bottle and wrote to Prime Minister John Key asking for a full commission of inquiry.

Broad's rationale for the in-house police inquiry is because Brash's expressions of concern had the "potential to undermine public trust and confidence in the police" - not whether Broad had contributed to public mistrust by failing to make sure the investigation was carried out appropriately in the first place.

The only good thing that can be said about this very late move is that Brash will be consulted over the appointment of an "independent" adviser to ensure the review is objective.

But the review is hopelessly narrow. Confidence is in fact already undermined by further discrepancies over the police investigation that became public this week.

When I fired off a salvo of questions at John Key's regular post-Cabinet press conference on Monday, the PM (who said he had read last week's column) affirmed he could not direct the police on this issue. But he did accept "there could be a prime ministerial inquiry".

Key also revealed (for the first time) that he had "raised the rumours" directly with various National Party figures that had been linked to the emails theft.

Activist Nicky Hager has repeatedly claimed that that emails on which he based his The Hollow Men demolition job of Brash came from high-up loyal National Party members.

The people Key confronted have "categorically denied" involvement and the Prime Minister said he has "no reason to doubt that".

Among Key revelations this week: He had two meetings on the issue with police. One was when he took over as Leader of the Opposition after Brash resigned and another more recent meeting to go over the investigation.

According to Key, the police briefing revealed such "gaping holes in the security of the leader of the opposition office at that time" it was not possible to identify how the theft occurred.

In his April 16 press statement, Quinn said police had eliminated the suggestion that an external computer hacker had breached the computer security within Parliament.

But Key - who has had a subsequent briefing - believes illegal access to the parliamentary computer system is still "most likely". But he noted the capability to investigate whether the system had been subject to an unauthorised breach was going to be hard to determine as there was no proper computer security system in place.

This exposes a considerable gap in Key's understanding, with Quinn's categorical statement that: "The investigation has concluded that no unauthorised or unlawful breach of Parliament's computer system) took place."

It is no wonder that Brash responded to Key's press conference statements by couriering a "Request for a commission of inquiry into Operation Arnold" to the Prime Minister's office.

The Prime Minister's press secretary's response was anodyne: "We understand Dr Brash's frustration over this issue. As is well known, the entire National Party was affected at the time and we share his frustration that this remains unresolved."

But the PM doesn't believe that the call for a Commission of Inquiry into the conduct of the Police would be in the public interest. "Not only would such an inquiry cost a lot of taxpayer money, it would risk diverting police resources and attention from far more critical issues."

Broad chimed in by contravening Quinn's earlier statement that the case was closed by saying: "There are considerable difficulties running Commissions of Inquiry in parallel with open criminal cases."

Key should get some better advice. The emails affair is not going away. A fully fledged commission of inquiry is the best option to get to the bottom of this scandal.