I cannot respond to that in the abstract, because I would not have known until yesterday what the substance of the allegations were. I can only assume that the ombudsman would have been pretty clear in reporting in confidence to the minister the extent and maybe the seriousness of the allegation, and depending on those factors, the minister might have been well advised at the time, by prudence if nothing else, to suspend temporarily the chief of the defence staff to have the matter investigated.
That would have seemed the reasonable, prudent course of action that was done certainly for Vice-Admiral Norman or anybody else facing these kinds of allegations.