"The police held torches around while one of the detectives -- in fact, the detective who was in charge of removing stuff from my house was there -- destroyed the materials they had copied from the house," Mr Hager said today.

"We were down in this dark little room, and the detective took an orange-handled hammer and he hit this hard drive 213 times. Then he took our boltcutters and he cut holes in it… it was a very vigorous way to do it."

Mr Hager's lawyer Steven Price says they are satisfied Mr Hager's material was not looked at.

"I'm happy to report that I think those have not been tampered with and that Nicky's sources are safe, and that all of the material that was seized has now been returned to him."

In addition to "hundreds of thousands of files from different projects", Mr Hager says the police even took "the very last ancient CD of family photos".

"They took everything. It's been fairly inconvenient not to have it, but most important of all, it's all coming back… we'll be walking off with it untouched, in our hands, safe forever."