On 21 November 2023 the Commissioner, the Hon. Ann Vanstone KC spoke at the National Public Sector Governance Forum about the importance of protecting whistleblowers. This is what she said:

In a 2022 report by Professor A J Brown and Kieran Pender entitled, Protecting Australia’s Whistleblowers: The Federal Roadmap, the importance of whistleblowers was encapsulated succinctly in this way:

Whistleblowers are a vital part of Australian democracy, playing a crucial role in the integrity and accountability of public and private institutions each and every day.

Australian research confirms it is people within organisations – the officials and employees – who really know what goes on and remain the single most important way in which wrongdoing is brought to light.

After three years as Commissioner of the Independent Commission Against Corruption in this State, I’ve reached the same conclusion as to the central importance of whistleblowers in shedding light on corruption.

Even instances of corrupt conduct that we might expect to be captured by integrity processes – for example, audits designed to detect accounting anomalies – rely for their effectiveness upon people not only conducting those processes, but also reporting on the results. An audit which reveals accounting anomalies is of no value unless something is done with that information. For that audit to be effective, the right authorities must be notified of the results and informed about what those results might mean.

As the principal mechanism for the detection and exposure of past and present corrupt conduct, whistleblowers are of critical importance to the minimization and prevention of future corrupt conduct. In an environment that supports and encourages whistleblowers, many would-be corrupt actors will be deterred from ever acting corruptly (or will curtail their corrupt behaviour) because they fear – and they know – that detection is more likely, with all the consequences that follow.

Why is it that whistleblowers assume such importance? Without pretending to offer a complete or conclusive answer to this question, I suggest it may in part be because of the nature of corrupt conduct itself; that is, conduct that is hidden and secretive, and which often occurs within the corrupt actor’s sphere of control. By this, I mean that the corrupt actor exploits a system which they know intimately and to which there is limited access. Whistleblowers are often people who share knowledge of and access to this system, and so are able to recognize suspicious conduct when it occurs. And they can explain to those outside the organisation why it is suspicious.

While recognizing the centrality of whistleblowers in exposing corruption, it is also important to recognize their limitations. Even those who know and speak up about one aspect of improper conduct, may be unaware of the totality of a corrupt scheme or activity. Although whistleblowers might provide the basis upon which an investigation is commenced, it must be remembered that, how that investigation looks at the end, and the conduct that is ultimately exposed, might be quite different from the initial report. By the same token an investigation might, in the end, result in the exoneration of its subject. In neither instance should this be seen as reflecting poorly on the whistleblower. It should simply be seen as a product of the investigation process.

I referred earlier to the importance of an environment that supports and encourages whistleblowers. But what does such an environment look like? This is a complex question, and one which I don’t propose to fully address today, but I think that first and foremost it must mean that whistleblowers feel safe to come forward without fear of reprisals to themselves or their families, either inside or outside the workplace.

In my view, this is not something that can be achieved merely by legislative protections, such as those in the Independent Commission Against Corruption Act 2012 or the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2016. Those Acts protect the identity of whistleblowers and prohibit victimisation on the basis of reporting particular information. But they cannot protect whistleblowers from more general harm that may come from reporting corrupt conduct. The treatment of whistleblowers in the community and the attitude to them more broadly must also be fair and alive to the personal costs that may be associated with reporting.

In this regard, I note that recently, in this state, there has been a tendency in public figures and the media to go after whistleblowers – to suggest that they are merely acting as ‘disgruntled employees’ or ‘vexatious underlings’, or to question the veracity of their accounts. As I said in my Response to Inspector’s Review of the Investigation of John Hanlon, ‘Demonising whistleblowers is both unfair and unhelpful, and it undoubtedly has a chilling effect on those who want to speak up.’

Ultimately, of course, it is not only the individual whistleblower who suffers when statements such as these are made publicly. It is the public.  By discouraging whistleblowers, you create greater room for corrupt conduct to flourish. That can only have the effect of eroding our public institutions and damaging the public interest.