Secret files sold for song at op shop

AN urgent probe has begun into how filing cabinets filled with classified and highly sensitive government documents ended up for sale at a secondhand furniture store.

Thousands of pages of documents – nearly all of them confidential or even “top secret” – were obtained by the ABC, which revealed the major breach of security yesterday. Cabinet documents are supposed to remain secret for at least 20 years.

The national broadcaster said the papers had been in two locked filing cabinets for sale at a Canberra furniture shop.

“They were sold off cheaply because they were heavy and no one could find the keys,” the ABC said. “A nifty person drilled the locks and uncovered the trove of documents inside. Suffice it to say, no one broke any laws.”

One document revealed the Australian Federal Police had lost nearly 400 national security files in five years.

Those files were from Cabinet’s national security committee when it was making critical decisions on counter-terrorism tactics, foreign relations, border protection, and troop deployments in the Middle East.

Another document exposed a breach in which nearly 200 top-secret, code-word-protected files were left in the office of senior minister Penny Wong after Labor’s 2013 election loss.

The documents — relating to the Afghan war, intelligence on other countries, and counter-terrorism operations — were supposed to have been destroyed.