A former senior Australian intelligence official has pleaded guilty to charges he illegally retained classified documents.
Roger Thomas Uren was on October 16 last year arrested at his Canberra home after the Australian Federal Police raided it in 2015.
Officers alleged that during the raid they found sensitive documents, which were kept unsecured in Uren's office in his converted garage.
The court previously heard all of the documents uncovered in the raid dated back to prior to 2001 when Uren still held his position as the assistant director at the prime minister's intelligence analysis agency, the Office of National Assessments.
The raid was prompted by the arrest of Uren's wife, Sheri Yan, in New York.
In 2016, Ms Yan was sentenced in the United States to 20 months in prison for conspiring to bribe John Ashe, president of the United Nations General Assembly, for whom she worked. She pleaded guilty.
Uren's lawyer, John Purnell SC, has said his client took the documents home to work on them and was surprised to discover they were still in his possession 14 years after he left his intelligence position.
An Australian Federal Police officer previously told the court there were no allegations that Uren had communicated the sensitive documents to any other parties.
While Uren was initially charged with 29 breaches of secrecy laws, he pleaded guilty to only three rolled-up charges in the ACT Magistrates Court on Wednesday.
The first two charges related to the unlawful retaining of Office of National Assessments records, while the third charge related to the unlawful retaining of Australian Security Intelligence Organisation records.
The first two offences are in contravention of the Intelligence Services Act, while the third offence is in contravention of section 18A of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Act.
All of the other charges against Uren were cancelled.
No facts were tendered to the court in Wednesday's proceedings because prosecutors said they contained classified information.
Magistrate Glenn Theakston said that made it "very difficult" to achieve open justice, and urged prosecutors to put together a statement of facts that was not classified.
Uren will be sentenced on September 8.
