06:50

Labor senators and Greens LGBTIQ spokeswoman Janet Rice have been probing the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on how many people had a copy of the Ruddock review report, which leaked on 10 October.



They established the number could be as low as three: former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, attorney general Christian Porter and the new prime minister, Scott Morrison.

Obviously the number would be a little higher than that when you include people in each of those three offices, but that’s not a very big number.

That explains why the report remained secret since it was submitted in May and will raise suspicions about why it leaked when it did.

The hearing has also established there has been no complaint to the Australian Federal Police and no investigation by the department into the leak.

Mathias Cormann is playing defence: “We’re all in the same profession we all understand that from time to time things go public before they’re ready to go public.”

Call me old-fashioned but it sounds like when public servants leak things it’s straight to the cops because of section 70 of the Crimes Act but when the suspicion — rightly or wrongly — falls on politicians, it’s all part of the cut and thrust of politics.