Anti-corruption champion and former judge Tony Fitzgerald has warned that Australia’s whistleblowing laws suffer from “fundamental flaws” and are failing to properly protect those who speak out about wrongdoing.
Fitzgerald, who presided over the landmark 1989 inquiry into Queensland police corruption, has called for major and urgent reform to whistleblower laws, including a harmonisation of protections across the public and private sectors. He said current whistleblowing regimes left a “large gap between the role that legal protections are meant to play, in theory, and what is happening in practice”.
In a speech to launch the Human Rights Law Centre’s new whistleblower legal support service on Wednesday night, Fitzgerald said the “essential objective” of such laws was to prevent reprisals or other injustices, something which is “not yet being fully achieved”.
“Our federal whistleblowing laws suffer fundamental flaws,” he said. “This problem will continue to exist until governments are prepared to recalibrate the relationship between self-interest and the public interest.”
The federal government has committed to whistleblower reforms for public sector workers and passed the first tranche of its proposal in June. Further reforms have been promised, based on the recommendations of the 2016 review of the Public Interest Disclosure Act by Philip Moss AM and other parliamentary committee reports. The government has also pledged to release a discussion paper canvassing the potential establishment of a dedicated whistleblower authority to provide advice and support to whistleblowers.
Fitzgerald’s work in the 1980s was crucial to the foundation of whistleblowing laws in Australia. His inquiry prompted Queensland to become the first jurisdiction to introduce whistleblower protections in 1990, followed by other states and the Commonwealth.
Fitzgerald described the protection of whistleblowers as a critical, but complex, challenge.
Fitzgerald cited research led by Griffith University professor AJ Brown showing that whistleblowers who clearly acted in the public interest faced some detriment in almost 60% of cases, including 29% who experienced direct damage such as harassment, dismissal or serious adverse legal consequences.
“It is plainly important that citizens speak up when things go wrong, especially perhaps, but not only, in the public sector,” he said. “Those who confront that need should not have to suffer repercussions or setbacks to their lives or careers or financial exposure for doing so.”
The comments were made as the HRLC launched the Whistleblower Project, a legal support service designed to help whistleblowers reveal and address wrongdoing under the protection of law.
Polling conducted by Essential Media for the HRLC shows 71% of Australians support stronger protections for whistleblowers, while 68% believe that whistleblowers should not be prosecuted by the government when they speak up in the public interest.
“People who courageously speak up when they see something wrong are vital to ending cultures of impunity,” the HRLC chief executive, Caitlin Reiger, said. “They should be recognised as human rights defenders, not punished.”
