Secret government papers disappeared decades ago. They turned up in a dusty corner of parliament

Secret documents dating back to the Fraser government and including advice on the Iraq War have been found locked away, hidden in sealed envelopes and forgotten in dusty parts of the prime minister’s own department.

A review of how 78 cabinet documents created in 2003 by John Howard’s government failed to be delivered to the National Archives has discovered even more papers – some of which go to the heart of the operation of previous administrations – were simply lost within the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

An official review found the prime minister’s department literally lost track of documents because it was overwhelmed by its COVID-19 pandemic workload.Credit: Maria Ercegovac

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the investigation earlier this month, slamming the mishandling of the documents, which included official reports to the national security committee.

Former spy chief Dennis Richardson’s inquiry cleared the department and the Morrison government of deliberately misplacing the documents, which were expected to be released on January 1.

They would have been the first official documents, from departments including Defence and various spy agencies, to have been released about the Howard government’s decision to go to war in March 2003.

Richardson said in the report released on Tuesday that any suggestion of political influence or interference in the missing submissions was “without foundation”.

But he did find a department that literally lost track of documents, including notebooks containing the details of cabinet discussions from as early as 1978, and which was overwhelmed by its COVID-19 pandemic workload.

The largest cache of 77 documents, Richardson said, had been put aside during the early part of the pandemic as officials dealt with the newly created national cabinet, which met 50 times between March and August 2020.

“The particular pandemic-driven work environment of 2020 became the catalyst for a major breakdown which, given the compounding systemic issues, was probably inevitable at some point,” he found.

“As a result of the office restrictions, a box of cabinet records was left in a secure storage area pending intelligence agency review and subsequently forgotten.”

Another document was found in a safe in a secure room, where it seemed to have been held for a review by a historian for the official histories project. The record was bundled with records from other years.

A further four documents on top of the 78 reported missing were found in a sealed envelope within a special security room inside a restricted area of the prime minister’s department.

Of all the missing documents, 14 relate directly to the Iraq War.

During the search for the missing documents, officials turned up 30 top-secret cabinet notebooks covering governments between 1978 and 1992. These notebooks often contain records of comments made by senior ministers during cabinet meetings.

Ordinary cabinet documents are released only 20 years after their creation. Notebooks are not released for 30 years due to their increased sensitivity.

Richardson also found huge problems in the arrangements within both the archives and the prime minister’s department in dealing with old cabinet documents, noting in some cases staff had “very little interest in proper record-keeping”.

Relevant public servants, including the director-general of the National Archives, did not have the security clearances required to examine top-secret documents.

“At present, were such circumstances to arise, the director-general would be unable to sight the material himself and would need to rely entirely on the advice of his officers who had the appropriate security clearances,” Richardson’s report said.

“We question whether such an arrangement would be considered credible in the event of the matter becoming public, leading to intense media and political scrutiny.”

There is also a backlog of documents that need to be shifted to the archives so they can be made publicly available. Cabinet records from 2004, which are due to be released on January 1 next year, have only just been moved to the archives for official vetting.

Documents from the last three years of the Howard government have yet to be moved.

Former prime ministers Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison were all interviewed by Richardson, with none able to recall ever being involved in any matter relating to the transfer of cabinet records from the department to the archives.

Richardson made five recommendations that address improving the archival processes for cabinet records within the department, ensuring senior staff hold appropriate security clearances and updating the archive’s public release process.

All recommendations have been accepted by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.

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