OFFICIAL SECRETS

Evening Post, Volume CVIII, Issue 118, 14 November 1929, Page 8

OFFICIAL SECRETS

AN AUSTRALIAN DANCER

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

SYDNEY, 7th November. - High Federal officials have recommended to the new Labour Government the desirability, from an official point of view of enacting an Australian/ counterpart of the Official Secrets Act of Great Britain. This Act provides that certain Government documents may be declared secret documents within tho meaning of the Act, and in. the public interests. If the contents of one of these is published, the publisher of the newspaper responsible becomes liable for punishment. The Ministry has not indicated its intentions on the subject. In_ Australia, under existing laws, Public servants may be severely punished for disclosing official secrets. Eecently it was found that an airman in the Eoyal Australian Air Force was copying documents and selling them to a weekly newspaper. He was tried by a court martial and sentenced to imprisonment. All avenues for proceeding against the publisher of the newspaper were explored, but no basis was found on which a charge couia be laid with any prospect of success. In another instance a temporary employee of the Prime Minister's Department was dismissed from the ser* vice and punished in the civil Courts' for stealing a Government document, which eventually came into the possession of a newspaper. The proprietor and publisher ,of the newspaper declined to be questioned on the subject by officials of tho Investigation Branch, and were found to be within their rights in refusing.

The- publication and misappropriation of Government documents in Australia are rare. More frequently one: Minister has expressed indignation because certain matters within his department have become known through the candour of his colleagues who did not see the same need for secrecy. Generally, in British _ practice, only documents that have relation to the safety of the realm, the inviolability of contracts, the mintage of gold, and the note issue are declared to be official d-cuments. It can now be related how one important document or file of documents—was missed from Mr Bruce's office when he was Prime Minister. An employee, not now in the service, was smarting under a sense of personal wrong from the Prime Minister, and had the quaint revenge of taking a file from the table right under Mr. Bruce's eyes, and later throwing it in the incinerator. He did not concern himself about reading it.