It's not like I get a lot of time off with my family, but I've given up a couple of hours of my Saturday morning because senior, respected journalists should not be allowed to take the side of secrecy without someone calling them on it

I had thought that the ongoing fuss over the Brash emails was now largely of interest only because it was a wonderful political whodunnit. But after debating the topic with Deborah Hill Cone on Newstalk ZB last evening and reading Fran O'Sullivan's column in the Herald this morning, I realise that some are still clinging to an irrationally partisan view.

The position of Brash's cheerleaders seems to boil down to a belief that the leaking of emails that he received or wrote amounts to theft. By that logic, they argue, police must investigate. But I'm left gasping at that conclusion.

Any journalist demanding a police investigation of leaked documents is undermining their own profession, transparency and the principles by which we operate. For the sake of politics, they are putting themselves on the side of secrecy.

Leaks are essential to democracy, especially in an era when political parties spend many thousands of dollars on PR spinners and strategists. You might say:

Leaks are a vital part of politics in every free society. They are often the only way a whistle-blower can safely bring privileged information to public attention.

Indeed, that's what the New Zealand Herald editorialised in November 2006 when Dr Brash sought and won an interim injunction to stop his emails being reported in the media (an injunction that was lifted a week later). It's worth remembering that Brash has tried to shut down the media from the moment it was clear these emails were going to be revealed. And it's worth noting that Brash's unsubstantiated allegations that Hager has received documents stolen from the home of Diane Foreman comes very close to defamation. To Hager's credit he hasn't raised the prospect of legal action despite these claims and others that he is a liar; journalists shouldn't try to gag other journalists. It only makes it more staggering that some in the media are taking Brash's side.

But let's look at why such senior journalists are taking this seemingly untenable position. In sum, they say the emails were stolen and all theft must be taken seriously. Nicky Hager, the only person speaking publicly who actually knows the source of the leaks, says that is "completely untrue and there has never been a shred of evidence to support it". He argued in depth on this site yesterday that yet another police investigation will be a waste of police time and resources, just as it is a waste of journalists' time to try to uncover another journalist's sources.

But let's ignore Hager's claims for a moment, and, like Brash et al, assume that Hager is lying. Even then, to lobby for further police investigation you would have to be a) convinced that these emails were stolen not leaked, b) believe that there is a difference between documents being stolen and leaked, and c) that the public's right to know is less important than alleged "theft".

On each point I utterly disagree.

The argument most journalists repeatedly make is that the public's right to know and our right to understand how our political process works outweighs other rights. Indeed, this was the argument used by the New York Times to justify their decision to print the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The Supreme Court agreed with them and ultimately the men who leaked those papers were cleared after a court case.

Truth is, you can find legal wrong-doing in just about any significant leak. Mark Felt has no right to tell two young Washington Post reporters about what went on at the Watergate office complex. Duncan Campbell relied on confidential sources releasing information about the UK Zircon spy satellite back in the 1980s. Seymour Hersh sure as heck didn't own the Abu Ghraib photos before the New Yorker published them in 2004. Whoever left the box of Philip Morris papers on the porch of 60 Minutes producer Lowell Bergman revealing once and for all the devious behaviour of Big Tobacco has surely stolen those documents from his or her employer.

Yet would any self-respecting journalist argue that police should be investigating and prosecuting the sources of those documents and photographs? So why should it be so here in New Zealand? Is our right to know any less precious?

Some times the public's right to know supercedes the law or other confidences. I've acted on that belief myself, although only on a minor scale. I've falsified my identity to enter prisons in New Zealand and Portugal so as to be able to tell the stories of those inside. I don't regret my decision for a moment.

Given the long careers both Hill Cone and O'Sullivan have enjoyed, I'd be amazed if they have never gazed upon documents they had no right to see or broken some law in the pursuit of a story. So why are they so vexed by this case?

Is it reasonable to ask whether it's because they were fans of Brash when he was in politics and share many of his free-market ideals? Or is that unfair? Are they really only motivated by their concern for parliamentary security, as they claim?

Perhaps. But I would be more sympathetic to that view had they been as outraged when it was revealed that the SIS had been spying on a member of parliament. That was a breach of parliament and privacy that was actually proved, rather than just alleged. Yet, while I'd be delighted to be corrected, I can't find a single column inch written by either of them in defence of Greens MP Keith Locke.

The pair have also insinuated that senior police came under pressure from the Labour-led government to under-perform in their investigations. So can we expect suggestions that police are only opening yet another investigation because John Key has come to power and is now leaning on them for a result? Er, no. There's no evidence for either scenario, just as there's no evidence the emails were stolen.

Having said that, it is time our constabulary stopped mucking around. The proper police response to has now become Brash's personal obsession would have been the same as that the British police made last week when asked to investigate who had leaked MPs corrupt expense claims to the Daily Telegraph. They politely declined, saying it was unlikely they would be able to obtain sufficient evidence and a prosecution and that they had better things to do with their resources.

And it's time journalists in this country got their priorities in order. Because Hager works on his own, outside the corridors of large media companies, it's become easy, even trendy, to dismiss his work as that of an activist. But he is no more an activist than O'Sullivan or Hill Cone, who are also conviction journalists and openly write from a particular political point of view. It's time the New Zealand media stopped the petty infighting and rallied together behind some basic principles. Let's start with the public's right to know.