Special nature of Cabinet documents

104. Cabinet documentation is any material departments and agencies prepare that is:
     1. intended for submission to the Cabinet (generally Cabinet submissions and attached material, including presentations)
     2. documents dealing with Cabinet meetings (agendas, Cabinet minutes and notes taken by Cabinet note takers).
105. Cabinet documents are considered to be the property of the Government of the day. They are not departmental records. As such they must be held separately from other working documents of government administration.
106. The unauthorised and premature disclosure of Cabinet documents, including draft Cabinet documents (such as draft Cabinet minutes), undermines collective ministerial responsibility. It also undermines the convention of Cabinet confidentiality. It is essential that the confidentiality of Cabinet documents, including draft Cabinet documents, is maintained to enable full and frank discussions to be had prior to the Cabinet making its decision.
107. It is inappropriate to provide copies of, or access to, final or draft Cabinet documents to sources external to government. It may, however, sometimes be necessary to consult with external sources in relation to matters which are the subject of proposed or current Cabinet consideration to ensure that Cabinet is fully apprised of the relevant information required for it to make an informed decision. A minister’s actual or proposed position should never be disclosed, and high‐level judgement needs to be exercised in deciding what information, if any, to disclose. Guidance should be obtained from the Cabinet Division.
108. Department and agency work in preparing, handling and securely storing Cabinet documents is subject to detailed security requirements determined by Cabinet Division. The requirements apply equally to ministerial offices and their staff as to public servants.

Custody of Cabinet documents

109. A new series of Cabinet records is established for each government.
110. Cabinet records (files) are held on behalf of the Government in the care and control of the Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) and are issued to ministers and departments on a need‐to‐know basis. Once a minister or department no longer has any immediate need for them, and, in any event, when the minister vacates office or a change of government occurs, any copies of Cabinet documents must be returned to Cabinet Division or destroyed.
111. The convention is that Cabinet documents are confidential to the Government which created them and not the property of the sponsoring minister or department. Access to them by succeeding governments is not granted without the approval of the current parliamentary leader of the appropriate political party.
     1. Ministers and assistant ministers and their staff should not seek from departments the Cabinet documents of the previous Government, or the advice provided to it.
112. The Secretary of PM&C may authorise requests for refreshment of memory access by former prime ministers, former ministers, former secretaries and some other specified government office holders who seek access to Cabinet documents with which they dealt personally while in office. Access will not be granted without the approval of the current parliamentary leader of the political party in Government at the time the requested record was created.
113.  Cabinet records and Cabinet notebooks are accessible to the public through the National Archives of Australia after the expiration of the statutory closed period. The closed period, which for Cabinet documents currently varies between 20 to 30 years, seeks to provide the best balance between the competing priorities of, on the one hand, the need to safeguard privacy, security and confidentiality of the Cabinet, and to use available resources to best effect and, on the other hand, maximising public access to records.