25.
material in private hands and to avoid the undesirable splitting of groups of papers where official and private material is inextricably mixed"[1]. He explained that, in combination with the proposed s 6(2), the proposed s 5(2)(f) would provide the Archives with statutory authority to continue the longstanding practice of the Australian Archives of approaching "Ministers and officials" at or around the time of their retirements to offer them the ability to deposit the whole of their collections of papers without "having to decide which papers are Commonwealth-owned". He recounted that "[t]his approach has been made for many years and has been accepted by many former officials, Ministers, Prime Ministers and Governors-General"[2]. He explained that the intention was to ensure "that the Archives can continue to do as it always has done, namely to offer donors the right to state conditions of access on the whole of their deposits"[3].
65 To be emphasised is that Professor Neale's explanation was in the context of the Archives Bill as first introduced in 1978. In that original form, the Archives Bill contained no clause corresponding to s 6(3) of the Archives Act. Moreover, as foreshadowed to the Governor-General by the Prime Minister in his letter of October 1977, the Archives Bill in that form contained in cll 18 and 21 provisions which would have operated to exclude "records of the Governor-General or of a former Governor-General" from the application of Divs 2 and 3 of Pt V and to allow a "person having the control of the custody" of such records to enter into an arrangement for the Archives to "have or retain the custody of those records" including by providing for the extent, if any, to which the Archives or any other persons were to have access to them. None of that was altered when the Archives Bill was reintroduced in 1981.
66 The Archives Bill as reintroduced in 1983, however, took quite a different approach. Whilst retaining substantively unaltered the text which became ss 5(2)(f), 6(2) and 70(3) of the Archives Act, it incorporated two significant departures from the earlier versions. One was the deletion of the proposed exclusion by cll 18 and 21 of records of the Governor-General or of a former
- ↑ Australia, Senate, Standing Committee on Education and the Arts (Reference: Archives Bill) 1978–79, Official Hansard Transcript of Evidence (1979) at 21.
- ↑ Australia, Senate, Standing Committee on Education and the Arts (Reference: Archives Bill) 1978–79, Official Hansard Transcript of Evidence (1979) at 368.
- ↑ Australia, Senate, Standing Committee on Education and the Arts (Reference: Archives Bill) 1978–79, Official Hansard Transcript of Evidence (1979) at 368.
