Cabinet Handbook - 15th edition

The Prime Minister and Cabinet Secretary have released the latest edition of the Cabinet Handbook. The Cabinet Handbook sets out the structure, practices and processes of the Government’s Cabinet and its committees.

Annex A - Roles and responsibilities

Cabinet Division

  1. Cabinet Division is directly responsible to the Prime Minister and the Cabinet Secretary for the impartial recording of Cabinet decisions and for the administration and development of Cabinet processes. It is also responsible to the Cabinet as a collective for ensuring the confidentiality of Cabinet proceedings and the impartial and effective operation of the Cabinet system.
  2. Cabinet Division also supports the Chairs of the Cabinet Committees by preparing agendas, providing Chairs with advice and support, and providing the administrative support to ensure an accurate record of meeting decisions and preparing and distributing the minutes.
  3. Cabinet Division provides support on all aspects of the Cabinet process and is the principal source of advice for ministers, ministerial offices, departments and agencies on Cabinet matters, this includes information about the Cabinet and Cabinet Committee meeting times. Cabinet Division staff are in regular contact with ministers’ offices, providing assistance and advice concerning Cabinet meetings, documents and procedures. Contact between Cabinet Division and departments (and agencies) is usually made through each department’s Cabinet Liaison Officer (CLO).
  4. Cabinet Division is also responsible for the management of the records of successive Cabinets. It maintains the registry of Cabinet documents for the current Government and preserves the Cabinet records of previous Governments (see Annex H – Cabinet documentation).
  5. Cabinet Division manages and maintains the CabNet+ system, which is the real-time, secure, whole of Australian government information and communications technology system used to support the Commonwealth’s end to end Cabinet process. The system provides electronic access at the PROTECTED and SECRET security classifications from approved networks across government.
  6. CabNet+ is available to ministers and their ministerial staff with access facilitated by Departmental Liaison Officers in ministerial offices. CabNet+ is also available to officials with their access facilitated by their departmental CLOs. CabNet+ allows Cabinet Division to drive a ‘digital first’ approach and has significantly decreased the distribution of paper copies of Cabinet documents.