Items medium note

FUNCTION AND CONTENT

This artificial series, created by the National Archives, contains Cabinet, War Cabinet and Cabinet committee papers that are not contained in any of the record series created by the Cabinet Office.

In an effort to create a near complete record of Federal Cabinet activity since 1901, the National Archives of Australia established this series as a way of supplementing the Cabinet Office holdings. This was required because the Cabinet Office records are non-existent prior to 1919 and there are also large gaps in the Cabinet Office's record series after 1919.

The records that are held in this series are copies of original documents from departmental files and personal records in Archives custody. The papers were located and copied through normal access examination caused by public requests for access to files. The copied Cabinet records include: agenda/business lists; submissions; minutes of meetings listing matters considered and related decisions and decisions on individual matters considered with or without submission. The series also includes copies of documents held by the Australian War Memorial and the National Library of Australia. Some non-Cabinet papers were also included in the series if they supplied the only evidence that some subjects were considered by Cabinet.

This series was established to create as complete as possible record of Federal Cabinet activity since 1901 as a supplement to the record maintained by the Cabinet Office.

SYSTEM OF ARRANGEMENT AND CONTROL

The overall arrangement of the series is by Ministry followed by committees of that ministry if appropriate. The items within each section are arranged chronologically by date of meeting. For example: 1920/7/21 refers to the meeting date, 21 July 1920. The series is assembled in visidex folders and each folder contains the papers of a particular ministry or ministries. Additional folders are added if warranted by the volume of papers.

In the cases where the Cabinet Office maintained a discrete series for the papers of a particular Committee, the corresponding papers for that Committee were located in a separate folder in series A6006.

Item numbers in this series are the date of the Cabinet meeting. In some cases, items have the same item number as they relate to the same meeting. When citing items from this series, the series number, item number and title need to be quoted.

RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHER RECORDS

This series is related in a supplementary fashion to all the series recorded by CA 3 Cabinet Secretariat I. The CA 3 Cabinet Secretariat I series contain the main set of records of the Cabinet Office and include submissions and minutes of meetings. The series is also related directly to each of the Departmental record series that contain the original documents from which the papers have been copied.

FINDING AIDS

Microfilm reference copies were made of this series in 1995. In 2017, the reference microfilm copies were digitised and uploaded to National Archives RecordSearch database. The digital image can be viewed by clicking on the "Digitised item' icon in the item registrations in RecordSearch.

Many of the individual items in this series have been digitized and the images attached to their corresponding RecordSearch item entry.

Temporary consignment A6006/8 was destroyed on 25 May 2017.

Temporary consignment A6006/11 was destroyed on 8 April 2021.

Previous series unregistered

CDS 1, Copies of Cabinet documents (from Departmental files), 
       c.1901-1941 as longer extant

Related series unregistered

See inventory of series CA 3: Secretary to Cabinet/Cabinet Secretariat I