KEY POINTS:
Why now? That has been the burning question since Don Brash revealed last Friday that he had been granted a High Court injunction blocking publication of the contents of personal emails stolen from his office computer.
Winston Peters yesterday described Dr Brash's decision to seek a gagging order
as a "bit fishy".
More than a bit. This one smells.
It has been public knowledge for well over a year that someone gained unauthorised access to Dr Brash's computer at Parliament.
Some of the pilfered emails containing advice to Dr Brash from the Business Roundtable were publicised during last year's election campaign after being leaked to a Sunday newspaper.
This year, Mr Peters tried to embarrass National's leader by releasing a couple of emails written by Dr Brash in 2004 which supposedly showed he had considered secretly hiring US political advisers to sharpen his party's campaign strategy.
Mr Peters boasted of having more to come. So why didn't National try to injunct the media and the NZ First leader back then, rather than wait until now with a catch-all application to the court?
One answer is that National presumably did not want to provoke Mr Peters into releasing more material. And anyway, an injunction might not have stopped him using parliamentary privilege to do it. He also would have loved nothing better than a legal battle with his old party.
The real reason may lie in rumours - cited by Dr Brash on Friday - that a book containing the stolen emails is to be published before Christmas.
Those rumours have been around for a couple of months, however. According to National's deputy leader, Gerry Brownlee, it has taken all this time to come up with a way of injuncting whoever is in possession of the stolen emails when, as in this case, the identity of that person or persons is not known.
If National has been worried the rumours might be about to bear fruit, the party was also clearly nervous about the public reaction to the news of the injunction, trying to bury it in the political dead-time of Friday afternoon even though the gagging order is dated the day before.
Dr Brash argued that legal action was necessary because the theft of private emails was an intolerable breach of personal privacy.
He made a further grab for the moral high ground yesterday, slating Mr Peters after the NZ First leader revealed his staff had destroyed his copy of the emails in September immediately after National called in the police to investigate the theft.
But Dr Brash may have trouble holding the high ground.
The material that has so far found its way into the public domain is largely historical and of diminishing relevance. If that is also true of the remaining stolen emails, why bother with an injunction when the effect is to draw attention to them?
The only assumption possible is that the contents of the emails are still embarrassing and bit of negative publicity from seeking gagging orders is better than a torrent which would greet their publication.
By yesterday, however, National's opponents had turned "Why now, Don?" into "What are you hiding, Don?"
Meanwhile, it appears the High Court ruling will be challenged by news organisations because of the dangerous precedent the inunction sets for coverage of leaked documents, and because of considerations of public interest.
As former Alliance leader Laila Harre suggested on National Radio yesterday, if the emails contradict public statements Dr Brash has made in the past, then it could be argued the public has a right to know.
So often in politics, the cover-up can end up looking worse than the original crime.
No doubt Government MPs will be queuing up to remind Dr Brash of that when Parliament meets today.
