With the Nats throwing out wild accusations at Labour and ACT over the leaked emails, I thought - as a geek with an intravenous email system - I'd just add some fuel to the speculation.
Molesworth & Featherston notes that "no emails sent by [Brash] seems to have escaped". This isn't strictly true, as Ruth Laugesen's article does quote a single, mundane line from Brash:
Brash thanks him and responds, "hope I get a chance to catch up with you shortly perhaps at Jenny Gibbs' home tomorrow evening?"
... though this looks much more like an inline part of a reply than an email sent by Brash. So it seems reasonable to assume that, as M&F muses, the leaker only had access to incoming emails, not outgoing ones.
This is very peculiar.
If it was someone who had access to the emails after the fact (i.e. An unauthorised access), then the emails would not be stacked in the inbox. It would have been filed away, or left in a massive archive (essentially a trash-bin). If it was filed away, why would the emails sent by Brash not have been filed there, too? If it was dug up from the trash, they would have had to use some kind of email-threading or "sort by sender" function, which would have given them access to the Brash-sent emails, too.
It, therefore, seems improbable that someone who was able to surreptitiously obtain emails sent to Brash would have been unable to steal emails sent by Brash.
Likewise, if it was one of the ACT/BRT players, surely they would have received *something* from Brash? Brash might not have taken their advice, but he would have responded in some form. Perhaps, if it was ACT/BRT, they were too embarrassed to show the correspondence from Brash telling them to piss off?
However - SST also quoted from a caucus speech and from faxes. ACT/BRT group would not have access to the former (the idea that they would be asked to review drafts of Brash's ultra-sensitive coup-speech is pretty far-fetched), and where would outsiders get faxes?
Which, really, just leaves us with National staffers. My friend up-on-high in Parliament tells me that a) of course Don Brash has someone reading his emails for them; b) some secretaries have shared inbox access with their charges, allowing them to sort their emails for them. If the culprit was indeed a staffer with this kind of access, it would also explain why the leak only included income emails and not the outgoing ones - Brash would have sent those from his own computer.
(If anyone can properly explain how the shared email-flow works in Parliament, it would be most enlightening.)
And aside from having lopsided access to emails, how many people would have a copy of the caucus speech? How many would see all of Brash's faxes?
M&F notes that "with only one exception, virtually all Bill English's staff in the leader's office were kept on by Dr Brash after the coup. Dark questions are being asked about the loyalties of one or two."
An outsider - say, someone from Labour - getting their hands on those emails would have been difficult to begin with, but it's the selective nature of what was leaked that's most telling about who the source is.
If the leak is really a Leader's Office staffer with ACT sympathies, then this isn't so bad for National. Well, okay, so their security is compromised and they have a rat in their nest, but at least it's not coming from one of their MPs (well, not directly, anyway). And, even though it shows Brash to have had the support of ACT/BRT, it also shows that he no longer has their support, which goes part-way to demonstrating that he is no longer their stooge (though it does make him a turncoat...). Okay, so it's pretty bad...
Moral of the story? Use the goddamn phone.