On the record: the National Archives of Australia.

THE ANNUAL RELEASE of thirty-year-old cabinet papers on New Year's Day causes some excitement, and brings the work of the National Archives of Australia into public focus. Though the content of the documents may be controversial, collecting government records in Australia is not. We have had no wars nor destructive acts of God or man to imperil the national collection. Other countries have not been so lucky. In his memoir of the Anglo-Irish war, On Another Man's Wound, the nationalist rebel Ernie O'Malley records that he organised the destruction of the Public Records Office in the Four Courts in Dublin--this was a sort of own goal, as it eliminated evidence of perfidious ...