Every day at Victoria's Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants, more than 20 lawyers squeeze around a table that runs the length of the hearing room.

Sitting in the cheap seats of what has become known as the Lawyer X royal commission are their juniors, laptops precariously balanced on their laps, coffee cups at their feet, madly typing away. The tapping of keys a constant hum.

Like a game of whack-a-mole, lawyers pop up and down out of their seats to address Commissioner Margaret McMurdo.

Those regularly on their feet are Justin Hannebery QC and Renee Enbom, barristers representing Victoria Police.

They are listening carefully for anything they deem too sensitive to be mentioned, before calling for it to be suppressed.

Names, words in common use and numbers and pseudonyms already issued to protect people are being banned from publication.

That's the equivalent of blurring a disguise. A disguise of a disguise, so to speak.

There are currently about 60 suppression and closed hearing orders that restrict what the media can report. Some orders specify to the very second when an offending utterance is made.

As an order is granted the plug from a live web stream is automatically pulled, plunging those watching at home into contextual darkness.

When it comes back on it's like having missed the cliff-hanger from the last episode of your favourite TV show — you have no idea what the hell is happening and there is no recap.

Those on the inside are just as confused.

Margaret McMurdo was appointed to lead the royal commission. ( Supplied: Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants )

Victoria Police controls the flow of information, a point Assistant Commissioner Neil Paterson made when he fronted the commission, when he informed a lawyer they would only get the information they asked for.

It's impossible to ask for information you don't know exists.

Which witness will take to the stand and what they can be asked hinges on the material police provide and whether they provide enough.

A situation Commissioner McMurdo herself has described as "magical mystery tour".

'Kafka himself couldn't have dreamt this up'

Simmering tensions over the level of interference police are running came to a head this week.

The discovery that 1,000 documents relating to their use of Ms Gobbo had been withheld, prompted Commissioner McMurdo to warn Victoria Police it is an offence under the inquires act not to comply with her orders to produce.

Mr Hannebery explained it was an oversight — they didn't think the material was relevant.

Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton took to 3AW radio to deny police are being deliberately slow in providing material.

"I can absolutely put my hand on my heart and say we are not trying to frustrate the royal commission," Mr Ashton said.

Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton has defended the force's response to the royal commission. ( AAP: Ellen Smith )

It's being taken so seriously he put a figure on it. Victoria Police is spending $1.5 million dollars a month out of its own budget — to pay for a 100-strong team and legal costs.

"It's a lot of coin. A lot of coin," he said.

Just add it to the $4.52 million police have already spent fighting to keep the use of Ms Gobbo as a police source out of the public eye.

Victoria Police has also tried to limit passing sensitive information to lawyers representing gangland murderers Evangelos Goussis and Faruk Orman as they try to get to bottom of just what role Ms Gobbo played in their clients's cases.

Some material produced is so heavily redacted, Orman's barrister Carly Marcs Lloyd expressed confusion as to why her own client's name was blacked out on her copy.

Then, in a move likened to the nightmarish and oppressive world depicted by novelist Franz Kafka, Victoria Police tried to have the lawyers for the very criminals Ms Gobbo worked for booted out of closed hearings.

Police lawyer Ms Enbom said the convicted killers could get transcripts of the evidence, but only after police had decided what information should be left in.

"Kafka himself couldn't have dreamt this up," Goussis's lawyer Adam Chernok said.

The Commissioner agreed they had now entered "cloud cuckoo land".

All this occurring as The Age newspaper reported a key member of Victoria Police's legal team, Brendan Murphy QC, was removed after he warned the force it was trying to withhold too much information.

The Public Interest Immunity defence

Hot on the lips of police lawyers is the principle of Public Interest Immunity, PII for short, and it is a phrase said quickly and often at the inquiry.

Some of the Commissioner's comments give an insight into her own frustrations.

The royal commission is streamed online, unless sensitive or suppressed information is discussed. ( Royal Commission into the Management of Police Informants )

PII is something Victoria Police, quite rightly, hold dear.

In fact they used it, unsuccessfully, all the way to the High Court, in an effort to try and keep this very royal commission at bay.

So what is it?

In its most simple and crude form the police argue the way they catch criminals, and who helps them do that, should be kept under wraps. If it becomes public, the bad guys are ahead of the game, police are thwarted and lives are at stake.

Put another way, you should never know — but it's for your own good.

The problem here is it's the very method Victoria Police have used to catch the bad guys that's under scrutiny — the use of supergrass criminal barrister Ms Gobbo as a police informer.

It was a practice the High Court labelled "reprehensible conduct" and "atrocious breaches" of police duties that should never be repeated.

But with the force's reputation having taken a big hit, some watching on are questioning if Victoria Police is now using PII as a blanket defence to protect its reputation.

Even as former detective Paul Dale's evidence turned to whether police officers go disco dancing at the Casino — a seemingly perverse but relevant line of inquiry about his relationship with Ms Gobbo — Commissioner McMurdo didn't miss a beat.

"You don't want to PII that?" she quipped from the bench.

The point was made.

The best show in town

For those fascinated by true crime, this is arguably the best show in town, but over the next few months only a few will have tickets to watch, as it enters the most prickly area for police and the hearings are held in private.

Now the stars of the show are the former Purana Taskforce detectives — the unit closely watched by Assistant Commissioner Simon Overland and lauded with bringing down the criminal enterprises of Carl Williams and Tony Mokbel.

Few would argue serious criminals don't belong in jail and you don't get more serious than drug traffickers and cold-blooded killers.

From day dot, Chief Commissioner Ashton's defence of using Ms Gobbo amounted to the ends justified the means, as Victoria Police battled to stop two rival drug factions that were picking off their competition in public execution-style murders.

Some might argue if murderers and drug dealers don't play by the rules, why should police.

Yet for any civilised society that is dangerous territory. In Victoria, at the moment the line is blurred.

A royal commission has different objectives and powers to the criminal justice system, but as counsel assisting Chris Winneke QC argued the rule of law still applies.

"Even in Victoria," Commissioner McMurdo responded.