Under s 70(2) of the Crimes Act 1914 (Cth), 'communicating the contents' of a document means conveying the substance or purport of the document or some part of it; it does not require communication of the whole document and may be done by indirect means. However, merely confirming the accuracy of a document leaked by another person is not communicating the document — it may be communicating a fact but not the document itself. A by-line in a newspaper article is not 'writing placed on a document' within s 70 of the Evidence Act 1995 (NSW) and cannot be admitted under that exception to prove authorship.
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