Australia is scrambling to contain the fallout from the publication of a treasure trove of secret documents that was found in two filing cabinets bought from a second-hand store.
The cache contained thousands of highly classified government files covering the deployment of armed forces in the Middle East and Afghanistan, national security briefings, intelligence on neighbouring states and details of counterterrorism operations.
They also reveal that police lost almost 400 documents from the top-secret national security committee.
The state-backed Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), which has obtained the files, said that it had refrained from releasing details of some of the documents because they could endanger national security.
However, what has already emerged is proving an embarrassment to senior establishment figures.
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One file revealed that Tony Abbott, the former prime minister, considered banning anyone under 30 from accessing income support in a radical proposal before the 2014 budget. Some of his ministers, it said, wanted to ban what the documents termed “job snobs” from receiving unemployment benefits.
The proposal was crushed by dissenters in his cabinet who feared that, if implemented, it might force jobless young people into homelessness, crime and other antisocial behaviour.
It also came to light that Scott Morrison, Australia’s treasurer, sought to delay security checks on hundreds of asylum seekers while he was minister for immigration so that they would automatically be ineligible to stay in Australia.
Nearly all the papers in the filing cabinet were classified, and many were marked as “top secret” or “Austeo”, meaning that they were for “Australian eyes only”. The documents span the terms of four prime ministers from the mid-1990s to Mr Abbott’s departure in 2015.
The battered cabinets were bought in a second-hand shop in Canberra; they had languished there for years but had been locked. The documents were discovered only when an anonymous purchaser opened them with a drill.
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Australia’s top public servant ordered an immediate investigation. Secret service officers brought safes to ABC offices in Canberra and Brisbane this morning to ensure the files are secure.
Some of the oldest documents date back to the governments of John Howard, Australia’s long-serving conservative prime minister, who left office in 2007. They show that his administration considered abolishing the right to refuse to answer police questions for those facing terrorism charges.
The documents also reveal that the police lost hundreds of classified documents from Australia’s secretive cabinet national security committee which controls the country’s security, intelligence and defence agenda. The committee also deploys Australia’s military and approves kill, capture or destroy missions.