Now lawDemocracy & Government Introduced in the House of Representatives, 01 Apr 2026

Catch-all secrecy crime lasts six more months

One secrecy crime covers public servants, the people who work for government, who break any of more than 300 rules about keeping facts private. It was about to run out. This short law kept it going while Parliament looks at a much bigger change.

Official name: Secrecy Provisions Amendment (Sunsetting Provision) Bill 2026

Who it affects

• Current and former federal public servants: Breaking a legal duty to keep facts private stays a crime until 29 December 2026.
• Contractors and others who work for federal agencies: The same crime keeps covering them for the extra six months.
• People whose personal, health or business details the government holds: Their details stay protected by the threat of a criminal charge for six more months.

A temporary catch-all secrecy crime

Many federal laws have secrecy duties. These are rules that say a public servant must keep certain facts private. Health records and business details are two examples.

Most of these duties have no punishment of their own. Section 122.4 of the Criminal Code fills that gap. The Criminal Code is the main federal law that lists crimes.

Section 122.4 makes it a crime for a current or former federal official to share facts when one of these duties says not to.

This catch-all crime was always meant to be short term. The plan was to check each duty one by one. Then the government would decide if each one still needed a criminal punishment.

So section 122.4 has an end date built in. On that day it stops working.

The Attorney-General's Department looks after the law for the federal government. It reviewed all federal secrecy rules. Its final report came out on 21 November 2023 with 11 ideas. One was to scrap section 122.4 once the duties had been sorted out.

What the law changes

Before this law, section 122.4 was due to stop working on 29 June 2026. This law moved that date to 29 December 2026. That is six months more.

Nothing else about the crime changed. It still covers a person who shares facts they got because they worked for the federal government. It applies when a federal law says those facts must stay private.

Say a worker at a federal health agency tells a friend about a patient's records. The law for those records says they must stay private. That worker can still be charged under section 122.4 until the new end date.

The usual defences in the Criminal Code still apply. Defences are reasons in the law that can excuse what a person did.

Link to the bigger bill

On the same day, 1 April 2026, the government brought in a much bigger bill. It is called the Secrecy Provisions Amendment (Repealing Offences) Bill 2026.

That bill would scrap section 122.4. It would put in a narrower crime. That crime would cover misusing government facts to get a benefit or cause harm.

It would also take criminal punishments away from more than 300 secrecy rules. It would keep them for 16 duties that guard private health, personal and business facts.

The government says it needed the extra six months so the old crime does not run out before Parliament decides on the bigger bill. Without this law, every one of those duties would have lost its criminal punishment on 29 June 2026.

Start date

This bill is now law. It was brought into the House of Representatives on 1 April 2026. It passed the House on 14 May 2026.

The Senate, Parliament's second house, passed it on 29 June 2026. The Governor-General, who stands in for the King, signed it into law the same day. It became Act No. 53 of 2026.

The law starts the day after it was signed. That is the day after 29 June 2026, the old date when section 122.4 was due to end.

The bigger secrecy bill passed the House on 14 May 2026. The Senate has not yet decided on it.

Its journey through Parliament

Official sources

• Bill page on aph.gov.au
• Text of the bill
• Explanatory memorandum
• Bills Digest

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