Leak Inquiry Length

Confusing signals have been emitted about how long the Leak Inquiry will take to investigate the recent budget leak. Telecom has completed its investigation and handed over its results to the State Services Commission on Friday, two days after the leak. It expects the SSC investigation to be "quite swift" as a result. Mark Prebble, on the other hand, expects that the SSC investigation will be completed "within a month".

Even if parallels to the Taito Field inquiry (projected time: nine days, actual time: nine months and counting) are discounted, this is an extraordinary long time to conduct an inquiry given that Telecom has confessed. Even evaluating the report and questioning the possible suspects named or implied by Telecom should take no more than a week. Secondly given that the report is to be handed to the Prime Minister and the Minister of State Services, Annette King, it'll probably be another year or two before the report is released to the public.