Another upshot of the Turnbull/Abbott war is the very serious matter of the leaking of highly classified information in regard to Australia's submarines. Abbott commented in the media about what was in the leak, making things even worse.
As Turnbull has called in the federal police over the whole affair, Abbott will now have to suffer the humiliation of being grilled by them over the leak.
Tony Abbott has already denied being the source of the leaked sections of the Defence white paper. The journalist who received the leak, a friend of Abbott's, has also denied it came from the former prime minister.
Taking them both at their word, the mere fact that Abbott agreed to be quoted at length for the story – a very favourable story to him but an attempted damning of Malcolm Turnbull – tacitly condoned the leak of what Fairfax Media has been told were "highly classified" documents.
That alone is a breathtaking breach of basic responsibility for a former prime minister and member of the national security committee of cabinet. Abbott should and will now be the subject of a grilling by the Australian Federal Police, as will his former defence minister and ally Kevin Andrews, who also gave a somewhat vague denial he was the leaker.
We are unlikely ever to know where it came from. With respect to the AFP, as Turnbull himself said after a photo of the female public servant at the centre of the Jamie Briggs affair was leaked, these inquiries "tend to come up with very little".
But Abbott has already damned himself. Blind Freddy can see this isn't about submarines. It's about Abbott and the leadership of the divided Liberal Party. Canberra Times
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