National leader John Key does not think the source of several policies obtained by Labour were through a new email breach.
National's emails have been leaked, or stolen, before. Nicky Hager based his 2006 book The Hollow Men on them.
National has maintained the five policies, which Labour
has released, were part of a batch left in a cafe or some other public place accidentally.
Mr Key yesterday revealed the policies were emailed to caucus members. Today he told NZPA: "I've always said I harbour concerns about the lack of security of the parliamentary email system but I just think that's extremely unlikely."
He said the policies were pdf documents and were quite long. It was likely MPs printed them out to make it easier to read them.
"The reality is there's been lots of drafts emailed around for quite some time now, so if someone was really having access to our system I would have thought they would have more than likely released a draft or some other details.
"The fact we were able to predict exactly what those policies were told us its likely that's someone has printed those pdf documents."
He was "absolutely convinced" it was an innocent but stupid mistake.
"In my opinion not a malicious act at all."
National is to release part of its health policy today after Labour put out a section yesterday.
Mr Key did not think were there would not be any more policy from the "batch".
Mr Key said the policy released by Associate Health Minister Jim Anderton was broadly accurate.
He reaffirmed there were no plans to cut GP visit subsidies.
"That's one of the dangers when you leak something that hasn't fully gone through the caucus process (that wrong information may be put out). The situation is there will be no change to GP subsidies in fact over time subsidies are likely to increase under National."
He said National would drive productivity in the health sector and health funding would increase under a National government.
- NZPA
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