Summary of activities

Meetings

The Council met on four occasions this reporting year, as follows:

11 August 2000 Canberra

24 November 2000 Canberra

23 February 2001 Canberra

11 May 2001 Melbourne

Statements required under the Act

The Archives Act requires the Minister and the Archives to place certain materials before the Council which specifically relate to disposal practices and special access matters.

National Archives’ records disposal practices

Under subsection 25(1) of the Act the Council received no statutory reports.

The Council has continued to take an active interest in the records disposal practices of the National Archives. The process of sentencing records has been of particular concern to the Council, and at its August meeting Council members inspected the repository at Mitchell and viewed staff at work sentencing records. At its May meeting, the Council considered the framework developed with the Australian Historical Association to guide consultations on appraisal matters with this group of stakeholders. Regular reports on the review of the Archives collection have been provided to the Council.

Special access to official records

Under subsection 56(2) of the Archives Act, access may be granted to official records under the thirty-year age threshold. Application is made directly to agencies responsible for controlling the relevant records. Deciding whether to grant access is the responsibility of the agency. Special arrangements have been in place since 1988 to assist agencies in this decision-making. The Council discussed these arrangements and the criteria for assessing applications under section 56(2) of the Archives Act in 1999–2000 and subsequently wrote to the Minister recommending changes to the arrangements in place.

At each meeting Council members noted reports prepared by the Archives on requests for and decisions relating to access requested under section 56(2) of the Archives Act.

A summary of applications received by agencies for access to records under section 56(2) of the Archives Act for the reporting period 2000–2001 follows:

• Six applications were received, all of which were granted access by the agencies concerned.
• There were no access applications under consideration at the beginning of the reporting period.
• There are no cases still under consideration.