The explosive document delivered a “holy shit” moment to lawyers fighting the Wall Street giant,showing the company had known for decades about the dangers of its forever chemicals.
The discovery of a cache of sensitive federal cabinet documents that had been forgotten and left lying around gathering dust for more than 40 years is possibly even too far-fetched for political satire.
Like a scene from The Office,highly secret cabinet documents were forgotten and left to collect dust in safes inside one the country’s most important departments.
Slamming the discovery of the extra documents just before Christmas,the prime minister said there was no reason why the documents should not be made public.
The government could use the precedent established by the Howard government in 2000. In that year,the Howard government made public,in advance of the then 30-year rule,historical records on Australia and East Timor between 1974 and 1976.
Cabinet documents reveal the Howard government moved quickly to lock in a claim over huge areas of the seabed across the Pacific,Indian and Southern oceans,including key areas off Australia’s Antarctic territory.
Cabinet documents reveal the Howard government went close to supporting a carbon price in 2003. They also show why it was killed off.
Documents show Defence took steps to protect its workers from toxic chemicals while tens of thousands of Australians were exposed.
Malaysian politicians,including a state minister,were killed when an Australian-made aircraft went down in 1976,fuelling secrecy and conspiracy theories.
The planned redundancies are part of the ABC’s digitisation of much of its audio and video collection and the rollout of systems that reporters and producers will use to source their own archival material.
Tony Smith,in one of his last addresses,has called on politicians to unite in supporting ongoing funding for the National Archives.