Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) to steal; thus as n. and adj., thieving.

1919		Sun. Times (Perth) 9 Mar. 7/3: Sometimes you’ll hear [the digger] complain that someone has cleftied (stolen) something’.
1941		‘Alex On The Med’ in M. Page Kiss Me Goodnight, Sgt.-Major (1973) 70: The wogs they all clifty by day and by night.
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 113: They’ll cliftie the bloody shirt off ya back.
1953		T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslake 207: It would be different if you’d cliftied the damned money.
1963		(con. 1944) L. Glassop Rats in New Guinea 123: He half-inched it from one of our blokes [...] The cliftie1 mongrel [Footnote 1: Thieving].
1977		(con. 1941) R. Beilby Gunner 274: ‘You clifti bastard!’ ‘Me no clifti, Georgtch!’ His honesty impugned, Sa’ad gestured offendedly.
1981		G. Young Slow Boats to China (1983) 89: ‘Too much clifti,’ he growled, using the slang Anglo-Arab word the British Army in Egypt once employed to mean ‘stealing’.