The Morrison government failed to hand over some national security-related cabinet documents from the time of the Iraq war to the National Archives of Australia for potential public release.
The National Archives of Australia on Monday released cabinet papers from 2003, a year most notable for the decision to invade Iraq under then prime minister John Howard.
That invasion was justified using the false assertion that Iraq under Saddam Hussein held weapons of mass destruction.
In a statement issued on Monday, the department of prime minister and cabinet revealed that the previous government had failed to hand over all of the 2003 cabinet documents, including documents prepared for the national security committee of cabinet, to the National Archives of Australia in 2020.
The department blamed “administrative oversights” for the missing records.
The blunder means the archives were unable to scrutinise some of the documents for potential public release in time for its usual publication of 20-year-old cabinet documents.
The department said the documents should have been transferred to the archives in 2020 to allow time for the usual pre-publication process, which includes scrutinising documents for any material exempt from publication and consulting on its release.
“The 2020 transfer of a small number of additional 2003 Cabinet records did not take place as it should have due to apparent administrative oversights by the Department, the Archives and security agencies,” the department said in a statement. “These oversights were likely as a result of COVID-19 disruptions at the time.”
The department says the missing records were found on 19 December this year. The department jointly inspected the records with the archives on 22 December 2023.
It will take some time before they can be considered for potential release. The material will need to be examined by security agencies and other relevant bodies and may still be deemed exempt from release.
The Albanese government has appointed Dennis Richardson, the former defence and foreign affairs secretary, to undertake an independent review of the 2020 transfer process to “confirm that all relevant records have been transferred”.
“Mr Richardson will complete his review by the end of January 2024,” the department said.
“Only the Archives decides which documents are released and to whom. Neither the Department, nor any Minister, has any role in this decision.”
The archives said it intended to make a decision about the release of the additional national security committee documents “as a matter of priority”.
“The access examination process will start immediately and we will aim to have decisions within 90 business days,” a spokesperson said.
Asked whether it was concerned about the error, the archives said it acknowledged the pressures agencies were under in 2020, when Covid caused significant disruption.
“We will continue to work closely with agencies to ensure eligible Commonwealth records are transferred to National Archives in line with the Archives Act 1983,” the spokesperson said.
Neither the department nor the archives said whether the missing records related to the Iraq war.
But national security committee documents related to the Iraq war appeared to be missing from the huge volume of material released by the archives on Monday.
The archives did, however, publish on Monday a record of cabinet’s decision to go to war.
The document shows the full cabinet signed off on the decision on 18 March 2003 based on “oral reports by the prime minister”.
The document did not contain mention of any doubt about Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction, the key justification for war, which proved to be false.
“The cabinet further noted that Australia’s goal in participating in any military enforcement action would be disarmament of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction,” the document said.
