I see why it does this now. Debian does

CONFIG=/etc/samba/smb.conf
# stuff
ucf --three-way --debconf-ok /usr/share/samba/smb.conf "$CONFIG"

in the postinit inside the .deb file to create the /etc/samba/smb.conf file. They do it this way so they don't nuke an already created file. I take back that they should be shipping an empty file, this way is better, but it also means you'll never be able to query it without some changes to the packaging tools.

The man page should mention the path though that's a bit lame.