Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to address the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enhancing Whistleblower Protections) Bill 2017. Like Senator O'Neill, I will be referring to the Senate Economics Legislation Committee report on the Treasury Laws Amendment (Enhancing Whistleblower Protections) Bill 2017 and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services whistleblower protection inquiry, which of course looked at a comprehensive suite of legislative measures to make sure that we have an effective set of laws to protect whistleblowers in this country. Effective whistleblowing provides an essential service in fostering integrity and accountability, while deterring and exposing misconduct, fraud and corruption. A recent analysis of whistleblower protections across G20 countries found Australia's laws to be comprehensive for the public sector, but lacking in the private sector.

The inquiry produced in an excellent report. I saw a lot of the work that went into that by a number of people—especially you, Senator O'Neill, in the chamber today—and I'd like to recognise that, because this is a critical area. If we are going to address fraud and misconduct in the financial services sector—and, in fact, in other sectors and in any workplace—these laws need to be hard and fast and we need to get them right. Evidence presented to the inquiry, as well as consideration of existing laws, indicates that whistleblower protections remain largely theoretical in this country with little practical effect in either the public or private sectors. This is due, in large part, to the near-impossibility of achieving under current laws four key things: protecting whistleblowers from reprisals and retaliatory action; holding those responsible for reprisals to account; effective investigation of alleged reprisals; and whistleblowers being able to seek redress for reprisals. Another significant issue identified by the committee was the fragmented nature of whistleblower legislation. In particular, significant inconsistencies exist not only between various pieces of Commonwealth, public and private sector whistleblower legislation but also across the various pieces of legislation that apply to different parts of the private sector.

The committee has made a number of recommendations. Sadly, not all those recommendations in the report are in this legislation that we have before us tonight. The legislation was probably written and drafted over a period of time before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services released its very extensive and good work. That's a very important point. Personally, I would have preferred to have seen the legislation brought forward at a point in time where we could have comprehensively addressed the many issues that were outlined in the report. The committee, through this report into whistleblower protections, recommended separate public and private whistleblower protection legislation. However, it recognised that it would be the preference, certainly of Labor and the Greens, to have a single act in the first place. Nevertheless, this is a first step. The work of the committee was assisted by a substantial body of evidence over the past two decades on whistleblower protections.

Acting Deputy President Williams, I know you would join with me at this point in recognising three whistleblowers that I have had the pleasure of speaking to and working with over recent years, going back to 2014 and the original ASIC inquiry, which you were instrumental in getting up and running. One of those is Don Morris from CBA, who came forward during the inquiry as a whistleblower, concerned that the information he'd given to ASIC hadn't been properly followed up.