i got put onto the holding story here:

[link to seeker401.wordpress.com]

look at the first comment..the actual LNG story has nothing to do with it btw

[link to www.abc.net.au]

Transcript
Police Minister Tim Holding targetted in Parliament over latest database breach

Broadcast: 19/08/2005

Reporter: Josephine Cafagna
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TIM HOLDING, POLICE MINISTER: What occurred with our briefing note was this: it arrived in my office; in the first couple of paragraphs there were significant errors, material errors - not spelling errors or grammatical errors, but material errors - I made a note that it was to be redrafted and resubmitted; and the memo never returned to my office.

JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA, REPORTER: It's been a very long week for Police Minister, Tim Holding. It started with a firestorm of opposition questions in parliament.

ROBERT DOYLE, OPPOSITION LEADER: When will the minister stop lying to this parliament and tell the truth about this fiasco?

JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA: And ended with him becoming the butt of jokes.

JON FAINE, 774 ABC: What's the best excuse you've ever come up with or that someone's used to you to try to match the excuse provided by Police Minister Tim Holding?

CALLER: I actually rang into my office to tell them that I'd found my neighbours murdered and couldn't come in and wondered why they didn't believe me, and it was true. So that's right up there with Minister Holding, I think.

JON FAINE: Yes. Well, do you believe him?

CALLER: No.

JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA: The joke surrounds Minister Tim Holding's excuse about why he hadn't read a ministerial briefing note alerting him to a massive security breach of police files. He says he simply didn't read the entire memo, which was headlined 'Unauthorised release of LEAP data'.

TIM HOLDING: I regret in retrospect that I didn't read the entire brief in its entirety. If I had of, then I would've been alerted to this situation and I would've been able to take appropriate action.

JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA: Didn't it cause alarm bells to ring, though, when you read that headline?

TIM HOLDING: Well, what alarmed me was that the brief was premised on inaccuracies, and I took the view that, you know, like any busy minister when you're reading a great many briefs, you want those briefs to be accurate.

ROBERT DOYLE: He got a memo from his department on the 25th of July, but he didn't read it all. Now, come on. I just don't believe him. He gets a memo headed 'Unauthorised access to LEAP data'. He reads the first paragraph, where he recognises the identity of one of the state's most well-known and controversial whistleblowers but, because there are spelling errors in the first paragraph, Tim declines to read on. That is not credible.

KEN COGHILL, MONASH UNIVERSITY: Well, a briefing note is, almost as the name suggests, it's a very brief note, one page or, at most, two pages, which very succinctly set out what the issue is, the sort of background to the issue, what the events have been and what sort of action has been taken or could be taken by the minister in response to the particular issue.

JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA: Dr Ken Coghill was Speaker in the Victorian parliament for four years from 1988. He's now a lecturer in parliamentary studies at Monash University and also conducts training sessions for new ministers. He says ministerial briefing notes are prepared for pressing or urgent matters a minister needs to be informed about.

KEN COGHILL: It would be prepared by senior officers within his department, and it would have to be cleared in normal circumstances by the head of the department before it went to the minister, although in particular circumstances that might be bypassed. But normally it would come to the minister with the authority of his department.

JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA: And has someone else read it, for example advisers read it, before the minister sees it?

KEN COGHILL: It will depend on the urgency. In an ideal world, obviously the minister's personal staff will have had the chance to look at it and check any detail back with the department before giving it to the minister. but sometimes things are too urgent for that to happen.

JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA: In fact, Minister Holding publicly identified a number of people who, he says, have let him down.

TIM HOLDING: Firstly, I'm disappointed that Victoria Police did not brief me, and I, frankly, find it disappointing that the Chief Commissioner of Police was not briefed by her own organisation with respect to this matter. I'm disappointed that my department did not adequately brief me in relation to this, either verbally or by resubmitting the original redrafted document. I'm also disappointed in myself. I'm disappointed that, firstly, I didn't read on through the brief to its conclusion, and then I would've been alerted to this matter, and I'm secondly disappointed that I didn't follow up the fact that I'd resubmitted the brief to the department for redrafting. I should've followed that up vigorously.

ROBERT DOYLE: If he was not told of this breach of security, then he's not across either portfolio, he is incompetent and he should go. If he was told and did nothing about it, then he is guilty of a cover-up of a massive breach of security and he should be sacked. So what the Police Minister needed to do last night was to find some middle way, and he has fabricated this cock-and-bull story about reading two paragraphs of a memo on the most serious subject possible but then not reading on.

JOSEPHINE CAFAGNA: By week's end, the head of the Justice Department, Penny Armitage, was wearing the blame. She issued a statement saying she ought to have done more to alert the minister. It's been a damaging two weeks for the Bracks government and especially for its Police Minister, Tim Holding. First the Office of Police Integrity controversy and now the latest scandal, and it's all been over issues to do with breaches over the Victoria Police LEAP database. Any further revelations to do with police files could prove fatal for the career of the young minister, seen by many as the rising star of the Bracks cabinet.

Police Commissioner Christine Nixon has so far remained silent on the revelations this week that 20,000 pages of confidential police files were sent to a prison whistleblower. It's all now in the hands of the Victorian Privacy Commissioner, Paul Chadwick, who was already very busy. As well as investigating the release of LEAP documents by the Office of Police Integrity, he's now been given the task of examining this latest LEAP data breach.