Recently the Australian government had a garage sale and sold filing cabinets full of secret documents. The person that purchased the cabinets discovered the secret documents and passed them onto the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the ABC. ASIO (the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) visited the ABC to provide them with a safe to place the secret documents presumably to prevent further exposure.
This is not a scene from Faulty Towers. It really happened. The Australian government has a law in the pipeline to make it illegal to handle such documents. This law was proposed before this event took place. However, it’s looking to be the ‘corrective’ measure to solve the problem when it happens again. Or something similar.
Such a law is like making it illegal to break into cars so we don’t need to lock them any longer.
We can conclude that both the ABC and Australian Government can’t secure their documents. The only sensible party here is ASIO because they brought in a safe to store the secret documents in while they were being managed by the ABC.
The solution should be for ASIO to give the Australian government a safe to store secret documents in and leave the reporters to do their jobs. If a law must be passed, make it one that makes it illegal to store secret documents in inappropriate ways.
It’s amazingly embarrassing that we’re in this situation. Friendly governments to Australia would be laughing just as hard as the enemies (non-friendly nations). Friends would laugh in disbelief that such stupid accidents can happen and question future sharing of secret information while enemies would laugh because, well, it’s just funny. But not “ha ha” funny.