The online publication of detailed floor plans for a new Australian embassy in Jakarta is not a security breach, the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) says.
The department has rejected coalition claims that the information, posted in 2009 on a government website and which is still freely available, should have been kept confidential.
A DFAT spokeswoman said the plans were neither classified nor sensitive.
"The public release of these plans in no way endangers DFAT staff, whose safety and security is always a priority for the department," she said in a statement on Tuesday.
"All embassy buildings are designed and built to mitigate the risk of terrorist attack.
News that makes sense
Your trusted source for staying up-to-date with the world around you. Get free daily news updates and analysis, straight to your inbox.
"Information of this kind is clearly not for public discussion or publication."
Such plans are released publicly to ensure proper parliamentary scrutiny of taxpayer funds, the spokeswoman said.
Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Julie Bishop said the government should still come clean about whether any security advice was sought before the blueprints were made public.
Ms Bishop noted it was not the first time the government had slipped up on national security.
In October last year, DFAT head Dennis Richardson admitted the department had made a mistake when it posted information of a new Baghdad embassy online although he denied security had been put at risk.
This week, Defence Minister Stephen Smith defended the availability of defence base plans on the same government website, saying it was not a threat.
