Needling over leaks adds impetus to hunt

By FRANCESCA MOLD political reporter

It's been a week of slow torture for the Government.

Act's master media manipulator Rodney Hide has been taunting senior ministers with damaging titbits from leaked documents written by the Government's official advisers.

Every couple of days, Mr Hide has produced an embarrassing legal opinion or piece of policy advice from a pile of reports which appear to have originated from the Treasury or the Crown Company Monitoring Advisory Unit.

Although many of the reports are dated up to a year ago, they relate to some of the more controversial projects and issues facing the Government, including the People's Bank, New Zealand Post and Television New Zealand.

Ministers have played down the effect of the leaks as nothing more than a nuisance.

But the Government was clearly bothered to the degree that it sanctioned a hunt for the source of the leaks, with the Treasury hiring former Justice Secretary David Oughton to find the mole.

Prime Minister Helen Clark has hinted the search is "narrowing in" and her deputy, Jim Anderton, said he had a "plate ready for the head".

The Treasury will not discuss the investigation other than to say it is continuing.

It is obviously uncomfortable with the finger being pointed at its own senior staff and is quick to remind the media that the leaks could have come from elsewhere.

Ministers and their staff also had access to the reports.

One of the country's top private investigators, Trevor Morley, a former police detective, said the leaking of documents was a serious breach of trust in the workplace.

Mr Morley, managing director of Wellington-based Morley Security and Investigation Group, said searching for the source of a leak could be a drawn-out and difficult process but it was important for every organisation to be conscious of the security of its documents, particularly in the case of the Government.

He said it was likely Mr Oughton would try to obtain the copy of the leaked document made public so he could work out who had access to the original. He would look for any uniqueness in the original that could have been transferred to the copy, such as the position of the staples. It might also be determined which office photocopier was used or whether it had been faxed.

The investigator would also focus on the physical security of the document, for example whether it had been locked away.

Once the ground work had been done, staff would be interviewed about their access to the document.

If the culprit was caught, it would be up to their employer, taking into account their employment contract, to decide what to do.

"But I would think that if someone did admit to that sort of thing it would be serious misconduct and they would be liable to dismissal."

Mr Morley said companies could mark documents in many ways to make them easier to trace, such as making microscopic changes to the text or spacing between words to differentiate each copy.

He said there had been few leaks in the past year, compared to several years ago when there had been a flurry of documents released by public servants who objected to a series of changes the Government was making.