Our collection is vast and diverse. It documents the full range of Australian Government activities since Federation in 1901, and includes significant 19th-century records dealing with activities that were transferred from the colonies to the Commonwealth.

Our collection comprises records of

• the Australian Government – over 100 years' of records created by government agencies as they document debates, decisions, actions and interactions
• Commonwealth persons – papers and other records of prominent people such as governors-general, prime ministers, ministers, secretaries and High Court judges
• the High Court – judges' notebooks, correspondence between High Court members, records of court judgements

Records in the National Archives come in a range of formats:

• paper files – the bulk of our collection
• photographs – over 160,000 of them
• audiovisual – around 200,000 film and video items
• sound recordings – radio archives, documentary soundtracks, Royal Commissions and Inquiries, speeches and more
• large-format – maps and plans
• objects – including treasures such as the cigarette case Ataturk gave Prime Minister Stanley Melbourne Bruce
• digital – some agencies have already transferred digital records to the Archives