Secret and highly-sensitive cabinet documents from five different federal governments have been discovering in two second-hand filing cabinets.
The filing cabinets were purchased at an auction in Canberra.
Documents from federal cabinet are not usually released until 20 years after their production.
Amidst the revelations coming from the documents are that the Australian Federal Police at one point lost almost 400 national security files over five years.
Another document says 195 sensitive documents- many of them relating to national security and similar themes- were left in the office of Labor Senator Penny Wong after Labor lost the 2013 election.
And another one reveals that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott ignored legal advice when he handed over cabinet documents to the insulation royal commission.
