Leading human rights advocates say more changes are needed to enable informants to speak out about injustices in Australia.
Australia is trailing many nations, including the USA, when it comes to support and funding for whistleblowers and greater protections are needed to enable people to come forward, said two of the nation’s leading whistleblower advocates.
“The Albanese government talks a good game on transparency,” Associate Legal Director at the Human Rights Law Centre and the founder of the Whistleblower Project , Kieran Pender, said. “In some areas they have delivered. We need to push them to do more.”
Mr Pender joined Gabriel Shipton, Australian film producer, human rights advocate and founder of The Information Rights Project, at UNSW Sydney’s public forum Whistleblowers: In Defence of Truth this week. Lenore Taylor, former editor of Guardian Australia, hosted the discussion.
“Whistleblowers make Australia a better place,” Mr Pender said, citing polling that shows 89% of Australians want better whistleblowing laws. “Whether you vote for the Greens, Teals, Libs, Labor or One Nation, you like whistleblowers, but that hasn’t yet led to reform.”
Whistleblowers in national security cases are often the ones who take the greatest risks, Mr Shipton said, due to the power imbalance between the organisations they scrutinise and the protection laws available to them.
“ASIO has incredible powers just to take you in, question you and not release you,” Mr Shipton said. “If you’re a journalist and you talk to them, it’s a crime and so … we try to support those whistleblowers because that is where most power in the state exists and so we argue it needs more scrutiny than other areas.”
Access to legal help is limited
The Information Rights Project is helping a former spy, known only as Marcus, who told the ABC he had shared intelligence with ASIO about Bondi gunmen Naveed and Sajid Akram’s alleged terrorism associations as early as 2019.
Shipton’s organisation, which was also instrumental in helping to free his brother, Julian Assange, has raised $50,000 for Marcus, who is in hiding overseas.
Mr Pender said the law is “very limited in the extent we can assist people who blow the whistle on national security matters”.
“That’s a problem because it means that people can’t get the legal assistance they need. I think too often we have this false dichotomy that transparency and national security are in tension,” he said.
“I’m not a transparency absolutist. I accept ASIO needs some degree of secrecy to operate effectively, but in Australia the balance is entirely tilted in the other direction.”
Calls for a whistleblower protection authority
The forum also heard from a whistleblower, whose identity was obscured in a video, who had worked in a children’s prison and raised concerns for the welfare of the young people in the jail. It highlighted how hard it can be for people to speak up in Australia.
“We have all these laws that say if you speak up, you’re protected. They are still not working in many cases,” Mr Pender said.
“The private sector regulator has brought one enforcement action in the six years since the law was changed, and they secured a $7 million penalty for a company that mistreated a whistleblower. We need more of that.”
A whistleblower protection authority to cover both the public and private sectors is a “no-brainer”, Mr Pender said.
The NSW Ombudsman has a dedicated whistleblower support team , and wants government support at a federal level and in other states and territories.
We have all these laws that say if you speak up, you’re protected. They are still not working in many cases.
“We need to help whistleblowers through the process, navigate that process as well, so that they can get the help they need. It’s such a difficult process and it’s such an isolating process if you don’t get the support you need.”
He said, apart from the NSW Ombudsman, the legal process is also entirely philanthropically funded.
“We are advocating (that) we need in Australia more than one dedicated legal service for whistleblowers,” Mr Pender said. “In the US there are hundreds of whistleblower lawyers. In Australia, the number of lawyers that help whistleblowers on a full-time basis is my team of five amazing attorneys. We need more than that.”
He also said his clients often speak about the long-term isolation of being a whistleblower.
“There’s so much secrecy or confidentiality wrapped up in the process. It’s very hard for people to talk about it so I think something that everyone can do is, in your own workplaces, support people who are speaking up, raising concerns, maybe being ostracised as troublemakers, but are trying to do the right thing.”
