John Roughan: Dalziel's leaked letter: so what?

COMMENT

Let's see if I've got this straight. A lawyer's letter to her client (the Sri Lankan girl who was claiming asylum from sexual abuse) came into the hands of the Immigration Minister, Lianne Dalziel, whose press secretary slipped it to TV3.

It came from the Prime Minister's Mt Albert electorate office but there is a dispute about how it got there. The electorate agent says it came from the lawyer's office, the lawyer says it didn't, which leaves the possibility it was pilfered from the girl's possessions at the Mangere refugee centre.

Either way, says a National MP, Judith Collins, the minister has breached the principle of confidentiality between a lawyer and client.

This is the kind of breakfast news that has Wellington agog and everyone else wondering who on earth left the radio tuned to National Radio.

While Sean Plunkett is interrogating the parties on every other thing, I can't help pondering this business of lawyers' privilege. Wouldn't anyone in the business of supplying advice of any kind appreciate the same protection of confidentiality?

What is special about legal advice? If anything, a lawyer's communications should be the least in need of particular secrecy because a lawyer's advice is always going to be scrupulously legal. Isn't it?

The confidentiality, I suppose, is designed to protect the client who gets a legal warning about some proposed course of action and ignores it. That could be fatal evidence in court, and why not?

It's not for the greater good of justice that lawyers shroud their correspondence with legal privilege. As far as I can see, it mainly serves lawyers' commercial interests; it means clients are more likely to deal with them.

Meanwhile, Plunkett is still on the case, demanding to know if the minister had a hand in slipping the letter to the media. What's eating him? Isn't this sort of thing to be encouraged?

According to the Herald, the letter was a covering note to some bad news for the girl from the Refugee Status Appeals Authority and the lawyer's handwritten comment implied that if all else failed they should go to the news media.

Fair enough, and fair enough, too, in my book, that a minister forbidden to put the other side of the case in convincing detail should try to poison a one-sided publicity campaign.

After all, which is the more reasonable breach of confidentiality? To reveal an asylum-seeker's personal information, or a lawyer's tactical advice?

And if she is forbidden to use either, how does she defend the public interest against people who put a politician under the heat of one-sided publicity for their own advantage?

That's the trouble with these dull, convoluted stories from the political hothouse. Once you have thought them through, it hasn't been worth the trouble.

Next morning the damned radio was still tuned to Morning Report and Plunkett really had his blood up. The previous afternoon Ms Dalziel had repented in Parliament of an answer she had given him about her knowledge of the press secretary's leak.

She had left the impression she had not known about it and in truth she had.

Shock, gasp. Plunkett wanted her resignation. He had her on the programme again, and again she repented. How she repented. Her remorse was terrible to behold. She was deeply sorry, utterly ashamed, didn't know why she'd done it.

It was the same in the morning papers. She had disappointed herself, she was truly remorseful, genuinely sorry, there was no excuse for it. "I do feel I have let myself down and let the Government down ... "

Oh, please. I've worked at Parliament. Nothing she and her press secretary did with the letter was at all unusual. Nor was her pretended ignorance of the leak.

Press secretaries exist to be a conduit from politicians to the media and often enough they are used to put out material the politician wants in the public domain but would rather not be the source.

Normally the grateful reporter is only too happy to oblige; the story looks stronger if it is not attributed to a partisan player.

All media accept material from all sorts of people whose reasons for keeping a distance are usually as trite as Ms Dalziel's.

She was happy to flourish the lawyer's letter once it was made public and it would not have made much difference if she had openly handed it to the press.

Now that she has admitted knowing about it she doesn't know why she pretended otherwise. She can think of no reason because there wasn't one to speak of. It was that trite. It was routine.

The only interesting point in this story is that it has been reported with such intensity. A month ago, I'd wager, it would not have been.

A few weeks ago, when Don Brash delivered his One Nation speech at Orewa, the political tide turned. And Ms Dalziel's treatment this week is a measure of how much has changed. News follows public opinion far more than it leads it. News needs to be credible. In reporting politics the media are highly attuned to the public credibility of respective parties as reflected in opinion polls.

A month ago, when National was still languishing with a quarter or less of committed voters, Judith Collins' complaint at the use of a lawyer's confidential communication would have merited barely a glance.

Opposition bullets like that come in every hour of every day. You have to make a judgment: does it matter? Do many out there care? Lawyers' confidentiality. Hardly a hanging offence. But that was last month. Now National has momentum and people are listening. The Government senses it, too.

Helen Clark's Government hasn't often been on the defensive during its four years so far. When it has been, her preferred defence has been a white flag. From Ruth Dyson to Lianne Dalziel, it is our first Government of the grovelling apology. And contrition has worked so far, leaving hardly a dent in Labour's polls.

But now Ms Dalziel's self-flagellation has left commentators unsatisfied. Suddenly a minister who has always sounded calm, authoritative and sensible in a sensitive job is being painted as a deceitful liability. None of it seems fair and somebody ought to say so.