CANBERRA, Australia — Australian secret service officers on Thursday secured thousands of classified documents that were sold with two secondhand filing cabinets and have been the basis of news reports by Australia’s national broadcaster. Abbott was replaced in 2015 by the current Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet on Wednesday initiated an urgent investigation into the disposal of the filing cabinets. ABC, which is state-owned but operates independently, said it had chosen not to report some documents on national security grounds. Australian Cabinet documents are usually kept secret for 20 years, before they are made public in a heavily redacted form.

Source: National Post January 31, 2018 23:27 UTC