Cabinet in confidence documents detailing the business cases for the state government's controversial stadiums policy were never shown to the full cabinet.

Government sources have confirmed that the full business cases prepared by KPMG - which the government has repeatedly refused to release - were never presented to a cabinet meeting, forcing ministers to publicly defend a policy when they hadn't seen the detail.

While the documents were taken to at least one cabinet sub-committee, most ministers have not seen them and will only see them for the first time when they are released to the upper house.

The leader of the government in the upper house, Don Harwin Credit:Janie Barrett

One minister said: "I think it is fair to say that some of us were uncomfortable being asked to defend this policy when we were never given the full details."