Last week in the Legislative Assembly, I tabled disclosures from two public servants who spoke up about wrongdoing in their workplaces. Here's why.
Whistleblowers play a critical role in exposing corruption, maladministration, abuse of power, misuse of public funds and unethical conduct within government institutions.
When public servants take the immense personal and professional risk of speaking out against these kinds of practices, it's clearly in the public interest for them to be supported - not silenced.
Backing whistleblowers is particularly important for us here in the ACT.
Having the country's longest-serving government can breed a culture of going along to get along. A "Yes, Minister" mentality is even more likely to emerge in a small jurisdiction like ours, where everyone knows everyone and rocking the boat might seriously hamper one's career prospects.
This creates further friction for public servants thinking about reporting wrongdoing, especially if the people they are meant to report to are part of the problem.
Thankfully, when internal reporting processes fail, our whistleblowing laws provide specific protections for public servants to disclose information to a member of the Legislative Assembly or a journalist.
This safeguard exists because human beings are flawed and, unfortunately, there will always be cases where institutions choose to protect themselves instead of protecting the public interest.
That is exactly what was alleged to have occurred in relation to both the disclosures I tabled in the Assembly last week.
Each case involved a public servant alleging they had repeatedly raised serious concerns internally with no appropriate investigation or corrective action occurring in response.
In the chamber, I stated that the tabled documents contained allegations from a Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT) employee of "fraudulent procurement, maladministration of public funds, governance failures, and non-compliance with workplace safety and training obligations" at CIT's Electric Vehicle TAFE Centre of Excellence.
The anonymous whistleblower alleged, among other things, that CIT was using electric hire vehicles to train students without telling the hire car companies - posing what the whistleblower described as a "significant risk of injury or death to staff, students, and the general public."
The other set of documents came from Brendan Moyle, the former head of the ACT's Office of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, alleging maladministration and non-compliance with multiple pieces of legislation in relation to the ACT government's failure to follow through on its commitments to First Nations people, and to provide a safe workplace for First Nations public servants.
These allegations are serious, and both matters should have been investigated comprehensively. But Brendan Moyle's allegations were only referred for independent investigation on the same day they were aired publicly in March 2026 - seven months after he sent his formal whistleblowing report to the head of the ACT public service.
And in the CIT case, the whistleblower sent their disclosure to the CEO of CIT back in January, but the Integrity Commission didn't see it until after I raised it in the Assembly last week - four and a half months later.
It's clear that in both cases, our whistleblowing framework failed the people and principles it was intended to support.
That's why I moved a motion calling for the ACT government to strengthen our whistleblowing framework, including by setting up a dedicated whistleblower support function to provide legal, wellbeing and casework support to public servants who want to speak up.
I was pleased that the motion passed with unanimous support.
But another motion I moved during the debate wasn't supported.
Having tabled the two whistleblowers' disclosures and accounts of their experiences, I sought the Assembly's support to publish them. That move was blocked by the government and opposition.
The reason given was that making the disclosures public could jeopardise the ongoing investigations into these matters - one by the Public Sector Standards Commissioner and the other by the Integrity Commission. The irony is that these investigations are only occurring precisely because the whistleblowers and I made their concerns public.
The CEO of CIT has since categorically denied the whistleblower's allegations, using the public platform and power afforded by her position to do so.
Meanwhile, Labor and the Liberals teamed up to conceal the full detail of those allegations from public scrutiny.
It was a telling move by the major parties. The Assembly had the opportunity to elevate the voice of a public servant who had the courage and integrity to raise deeply troubling allegations of maladministration in their workplace.
It chose to silence them instead, undermining the intent of the laws that allowed the whistleblowers to provide their disclosures to me in the first place.
Because of that vote, while my Assembly colleagues can now access the disclosures I tabled, you can't.
Democracy manifest, hey?
