| Monday, October 15, 2012 6:00 AM

One thing about an inquiry is that it buries an issue, it gets it off the agenda and that's what State Homie John Key will have been pondering over the weekend as he faces the grizzlies filing into the Parliamentary bear pit tomorrow after their two week recess.

Political parties call for them all the time even if one is already underway and that's certainly the case with the Government's bumbling spy machine, the GCSB.

Okay the inquiry by the Director General of Security and Intelligence Paul Neazor was as pure as the driven dross. Justice Neazor is the man who's charged with ensuring our spies act within the law so inquiring into their illegal actions is like gazing at his own navel.

We're now meant to feel more comfortable that the spies' political boss State Homie John Key has called in his Cabinet secretary Rebecca Kitteridge to have a look at what's going on in the world of trench coats and trilbies. There's little doubt this woman knows how to keep a secret, she's sat around the Cabinet table listening to all the full, frank and meaningless murmurings over the past several years and hasn't breathed a word.

There was a glitch in her career though when a few months back she inadvertently posted the royal honours on a website before the official announcements.

But what she finds out snooping into the snoops will remain a closely guarded secret which will be cold comfort to those who want to know what's really going on in an organisation that doesn't have any checks and balances, other than convincing the Prime Minister than their annual spend of more than $56 million is a good one.

So The Homie will once again face calls for a real inquiry when the grizzlies begin moaning tomorrow. The easiest way out would be to bring an old codger judge out of retirement and let him while away the time trying to get to the bottom of whatever he has to get to the bottom of.

He'd know what can be said publicly and what has to remain mum. At least it'd move this irritant off the agenda.

But at the end of it all, you'd have to ask, what has our blip on the radar screen got to hide anyway?