Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ashlin Macgee. This is seven am.
Speaker 1: There's been another strike against whistleblowing. Richard Boyle was a
Speaker 1: tax office employee when he raised concerns internally about a
Speaker 1: scheme to garnish overdue taxes directly from people's bank accounts,
Speaker 1: and when that didn't work, he told journalists. But accord
Speaker 1: to Adelaide, yesterday upheld a ruling that he's not a whistleblower,
Speaker 1: which means he now has no defense for leaking that
Speaker 1: confidential information. Today Mcquarie University professor of journalism and whistleblower
Speaker 1: advocate Peter Grestor on why the government talks big on
Speaker 1: open democracy but hasn't acted to fix the system. It's Thursday,
Speaker 1: June twenty Peter. Richard Boyle's been in and out of
Speaker 1: court for a few years now. His case hasn't even
Speaker 1: gone to trial yet, though. Remind us why he is
Speaker 1: in this position.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a pretty tragic, troubling story. I think about
Speaker 2: five or six years ago, Richard was working as a
Speaker 2: tax official in the office, the ATO office in Adelaide,
Speaker 2: and he saw what they're called garner she notices, which
Speaker 2: are automatic notices that the office is able to issue
Speaker 2: to banks to give them money from people that owe
Speaker 2: them tax without getting clearance from the people themselves, the
Speaker 2: taxpayers themselves, and at one level that strictly speaking, that's legal,
Speaker 2: but it was putting enormous pressure on individuals who caught
Speaker 2: themselves in all sorts of strife, businesses that were struggling
Speaker 2: to deal with some of the things that businesses normally
Speaker 2: deal with, and who were happy to cover the bills
Speaker 2: but just couldn't deal with the kind of pressure of
Speaker 2: a whacking break big tax bill at that point, and
Speaker 2: Richard felt that that was highly unethical. He made a
Speaker 2: complaint or reported the problem to his superior They dismissed
Speaker 2: the issue. He then went to the media, to the ABC,
Speaker 2: and he took some recordings as evidence of what the
Speaker 2: Tax Office was doing.
Speaker 3: Tonight, we meet people who say their lives have been
Speaker 3: destroyed by the heavy handed tactics of the ATO. Among
Speaker 3: them is a whistleblower who describes a toxic culture driven
Speaker 3: by revenue targets and KPIs that staff likened to a
Speaker 3: cash grab.
Speaker 4: Richard was soon after out it as the source.
Speaker 3: Last week and the lead up to our program, his
Speaker 3: home was raided by the ATO and the federal police.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it came with quite a shock.
Speaker 2: Richard and his wife were in their Adelaide apartment early
Speaker 2: in the morning, just getting ready to go out. I
Speaker 2: think Richard had just been in the shower, and the
Speaker 2: AFP came in, barged in with handcuffs and weapons and
Speaker 2: so on, and started going through his draws, personal belongings, documents,
Speaker 2: pretty much everything, and dragged him off for questioning.
Speaker 5: Seems very vindictive that they would do this, use public resources,
Speaker 5: massive amounts of public resources to investigate someone who's blown
Speaker 5: the whistle because uneffeole behavior in the strange taxation office.
Speaker 2: And he's been on trial ever since for illegally taking
Speaker 2: tax office records, illegally recording the details of taxpayers.
Speaker 4: Now, strictly speaking, that's true.
Speaker 2: He did make those recordings, he did keep those documents,
Speaker 2: he did pass them on. But what Richard and a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of supporters, including myself, have been arguing is
Speaker 2: that it was an essential part of the whistleblowing process.
Speaker 2: And in the end, the ATO was forced to look
Speaker 2: at its processes, look at how it was using Ganashee
Speaker 2: notices and acknowledged that they were abusive and harmful and
Speaker 2: causing a lot of people enormous stress, and it changed
Speaker 2: its practices.
Speaker 6: As countless subsequent inquiries, including from this Chamber, have conclusively
Speaker 6: found this was the Tax Office rogodeb And while that
Speaker 6: Role Commission has just finished with damning findings against the
Speaker 6: scheme's authors, Richard is the only one from the Tax
Speaker 6: offers facing legal sanction.
Speaker 2: So we're in this rather crazy situation of a guy
Speaker 2: exposing something that had to be exposed, that was causing
Speaker 2: enormous pressure that the government has changed. But the guy
Speaker 2: that exposed that is now being prosecuted for the act
Speaker 2: of blowing the whistle, and that strikes me as pretty tragic.
Speaker 1: Richard was back in court in Adelaide yesterday morning talk
Speaker 1: me through what's happened.
Speaker 2: So Richard had originally argued that he was he should
Speaker 2: be immune from prosecution under whistleblowing legislation, which allows whistleblowers
Speaker 2: to be protected if they're exposing things in the public interest.
Speaker 7: Judge judgment in this case found that whistleblowing laws only
Speaker 7: provided narrow protection to Richard. Boyle only protected the actual
Speaker 7: act of disclosure, not his conduct in preparing to speak.
Speaker 2: Into Now Richard lost that appeal, or lost that argument rather,
Speaker 2: and so he went to the South Australian Court of
Speaker 2: Appeal and it was the Court of Appeal that has
Speaker 2: heard his argument and they threw that appeal out. So
Speaker 2: Richard now has to face trial and potentially quite a
Speaker 2: few years behind bars if he loses it.
Speaker 1: Tell me a little bit more about that whistle blow
Speaker 1: a protection he was asking for. What does it mean
Speaker 1: for people when they're facing these kinds of charges, all
Speaker 1: these kinds of cases.
Speaker 2: What it's supposed to do is give public servants the
Speaker 2: power of the ability to expose misdeeds within government if
Speaker 2: what they're doing is in the public interest. Remember they
Speaker 2: are literally public servants. They're supposed to be serving us,
Speaker 2: not the government. And pretty sure everyone recognizes there is
Speaker 2: an enormous power imbalance between individuals and the state, and
Speaker 2: when the state is abusing that power, then we need
Speaker 2: whistle blowers who have the capacity to expose those things
Speaker 2: in the public interest. Now, the Attorney General Mark Dreyfuss
Speaker 2: has acknowledged quite some time ago that whistleblower protections simply
Speaker 2: aren't working because we see cases like Richard's and David McBride,
Speaker 2: who was the whistleblower that exposed allegations of war crimes
Speaker 2: by Australian's Special forces. He just went to prison a
Speaker 2: month or so ago, which is also pretty tragic, and
Speaker 2: the Attorney General has promised to reform the whistleblower protections
Speaker 2: and increase the public interest defense.
Speaker 8: The Albanezer government is committed to restoring trust and integrity
Speaker 8: to government and an effective public sector whistleblowing framework is
Speaker 8: essential to achieving this, including to support disclosures of corrupt
Speaker 8: conduct to the National Lady Corruption Commission.
Speaker 2: Now, we had hoped that Richard would be able to
Speaker 2: lean on that public interest defense in this particular case, and.
Speaker 4: I argue that he was acting on behalf of all
Speaker 4: of us.
Speaker 2: What we saw yesterday was I think a very serious
Speaker 2: blow to anybody than any public servants who might be
Speaker 2: seeing wrongdoing and thinking about following Richard's example. This is
Speaker 2: going to have a very very chilling effect I think
Speaker 2: on whistle blowing and I think on press freedom. Richard really,
Speaker 2: which is one of my big concerns. I think judges
Speaker 2: tend to look at the very narrow detail of what
Speaker 2: they did wrong in the law, and the law is
Speaker 2: very clear and way that against a sort of rather
Speaker 2: mushier ideal around the public interest. And what we're seeing
Speaker 2: in Australia repeatedly happen is that the judges say, well,
Speaker 2: I can see that you broke this law very very clearly,
Speaker 2: and so I've got no real option but to find
Speaker 2: you guilty of that offense. That's what we saw happen
Speaker 2: in David McBride's case. Again, we've all been arguing, myself
Speaker 2: and a whole bunch of others who've been supporting the
Speaker 2: whistleblowers have been arguing that that public interest needs to
Speaker 2: be taken into account and the courts just don't seem
Speaker 2: to have the capacity or the world.
Speaker 4: To do it.
Speaker 1: After the break, why the government seems to be all
Speaker 1: talk and no action, Peter, The Albanese government says it
Speaker 1: is committed to transparency. It says things should improve for whistleblowers.
Speaker 1: You laugh, Tell me why you're laughing.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I remember Mark Drevers before the last election, published on
Speaker 2: his own website a very clear statement that he was
Speaker 2: committed to transparency, to improving whistleblower protections, to making sure
Speaker 2: that the government worked for the people, not for itself.
Speaker 9: I have a near permanent interest in whistleblower protection, you know.
Speaker 2: To his credit, I suppose Mark Dravis has also gone
Speaker 2: through a process of reviewing whistleblower legislation.
Speaker 9: Now, looking at the suggestions that have come in from
Speaker 9: the public, from other members of Parliament about what further
Speaker 9: reforms are needed for our whistle blower protection scheme, and
Speaker 9: I'm looking forward to enacting those.
Speaker 2: But these two cases, in particular, Richard Boyles and David
Speaker 2: McBride's been so emblematic that we've felt that it's really
Speaker 2: important that the Attorney General follow up that rhetoric and
Speaker 2: act on these two cases and withdraw the prosecutions. By
Speaker 2: not following through, I think it sends a really bad message.
Speaker 2: It suggests that the government just isn't serious about following
Speaker 2: through on all of those promises, and I think that's
Speaker 2: a very bad look. But I think it's also really
Speaker 2: important that we underlie. We remind our politicians, we remind
Speaker 2: our public servants that they're supposed to work for us.
Speaker 2: We are their employers. You know, when we pay our taxes,
Speaker 2: we pay their wages. When we go to vote, we
Speaker 2: effectively decide who we're hiring.
Speaker 4: To run.
Speaker 2: They work for us, not the other way around. That
Speaker 2: means that they need to be accountable to us. And
Speaker 2: the mechanisms that we do that, partly are through the courts,
Speaker 2: through all sorts of oversight bodies, but also through the press.
Speaker 2: And we cannot do that if whistleblowers are being prosecuted
Speaker 2: for going to the press. That is an essential mechanism,
Speaker 2: an essential safety valve which keeps our system of democracy honest,
Speaker 2: and at the moment it's just not working.
Speaker 1: And so Peter, what is the fix here? If the
Speaker 1: courts are following the law, how does the law need
Speaker 1: to change? What does it look like in an ideal situation?
Speaker 2: The law needs to give far greater emphasis to the
Speaker 2: public interest defense. It needs to recognize that there is
Speaker 2: a very potent need, a very important democratic need, to
Speaker 2: give whistleblowers that defense and make sure that it is usable.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of other steps that the law
Speaker 2: or that the government needs to do, and one of
Speaker 2: them is to set up an independent whistleblower authority that
Speaker 2: has the capacity to help whistleblowers navigate the very complicated
Speaker 2: legal mechanisms to make sure that they're able to stay
Speaker 2: on the right side of the law to give them
Speaker 2: advice and support and make sure that whistleblowers are protected
Speaker 2: or punished. It's certainly something that would also signal the
Speaker 2: government's seriousness about supporting whistleblowing.
Speaker 1: What do you think the Prime Minister's appetite is like
Speaker 1: for that?
Speaker 2: The Prime Minister and the Attorney General very very forthright
Speaker 2: in opposition less so now. And you know, as we've
Speaker 2: seen in recent reporting, the Financial Review looking at a
Speaker 2: particular speech that the Prime Minister gave some time ago
Speaker 2: when he was in opposition about the importance of transparency
Speaker 2: and accountability. And so the vin Review discovered that that
Speaker 2: speech had magically disappeared from the Internet for a period
Speaker 2: until they started asking questions about it, at which point
Speaker 2: it suddenly sort of surreptitiously popped back up again. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the Prime Minister's office dismissed that disappearing speech as a
Speaker 2: technical glitch. It's also hard not to see the coincidence here.
Speaker 2: But I want to give the government some credit for
Speaker 2: making the right noises and reviewing a lot of other
Speaker 2: pieces of legislation around secrecy and privacy and so on,
Speaker 2: which I think is helping. But at the moment, it
Speaker 2: looks far more cosmetic than it does realistic or practical.
Speaker 2: A few years ago, you might remember when the Australian
Speaker 2: Federal Police rated two news organizations.
Speaker 4: This was back in twenty nineteen.
Speaker 2: The New York Times took a good, hard look at
Speaker 2: Australia's culture and they declared that Australia may well be
Speaker 2: the world's most secretive democracy. And that was not a
Speaker 2: flippant throwaway line. Think that was a serious piece of journalism.
Speaker 2: And you know, I've been looking hard at Australia's culture
Speaker 2: of secrets.
Speaker 4: You know, I think I have to agree.
Speaker 2: We have all sorts of provisions on paper that support
Speaker 2: openness and transparency, like whistleblower protections and freedom of information laws.
Speaker 2: But anybody who works with whistleblowers or FOI applications knows
Speaker 2: that they just don't work.
Speaker 4: They are utterly dysfunctional.
Speaker 2: And then since twenty nineteen, what we've seen are more
Speaker 2: restrictive laws that have been passed. Not less, we've passed
Speaker 2: more national security legislation since nine to eleven than any
Speaker 2: other country on Earth, almost one hundred separate pieces of legislation.
Speaker 2: Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't be upgrading our
Speaker 2: national security laws to cope with the current environment. But
Speaker 2: huge numbers of those laws intrude on our civil liberties,
Speaker 2: in true, on our freedom of speech, intrude on press freedom,
Speaker 2: intrude on transparency in go and I think overall, it's
Speaker 2: actually shifted the balance of power in favor of government
Speaker 2: away from us as individuals citizens. We need to be very,
Speaker 2: very careful when that happens, because it turns us more
Speaker 2: towards authoritarianism than towards a level democracy that we like
Speaker 2: to think of ourselves.
Speaker 1: As you mentioned David McBride, who has been sentenced and
Speaker 1: is now in jail. We spoke to him just on
Speaker 1: the eve of his sentencing hearing.
Speaker 4: Whatever happens today.
Speaker 10: Put it this way, it'll be hard to choke back
Speaker 10: that years, because while it's not going to be completely
Speaker 10: over today, it is the end of a pretty long phase.
Speaker 1: And you could hear the emotion in his voice and
Speaker 1: the toll that it's taken on him. Cases like this
Speaker 1: are hardly an ad for whistle blowing, are they.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 2: No, they're not put yourself in the position of a
Speaker 2: public servant who is sitting on some information about some
Speaker 2: wrongdoing that they're seeing in government, and on the one hand,
Speaker 2: their list to the Prime Minister and the Attorney General's
Speaker 2: rhetoric around protecting whistleblowers. And on the other hand you
Speaker 2: see the experiences of Richard and David. You see how
Speaker 2: they've suffered financial ruin their careers, have been shot, at
Speaker 2: least one of them is already in prison, They've suffered
Speaker 2: enormous personal stress.
Speaker 4: As a result of this.
Speaker 2: The price that those guys have paid individually for doing
Speaker 2: what I think most of us would recognize as really
Speaker 2: heroic acts.
Speaker 4: On behalf of all of us.
Speaker 2: If you're a public seven sitting on information, what are
Speaker 2: you going to do? You're hardly going to think I'm
Speaker 2: going to go out there. Whistle Blowing does work in
Speaker 2: some places, but those two cases in particular, I think
Speaker 2: are very very bad advertisements for whistleblowing.
Speaker 4: In this country.
Speaker 1: Peter, thanks so much for your time.
Speaker 4: It's fantastic to talk to Uston.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, state governments in Victoria and
Speaker 1: Queensland have rejected the nuclear policy announced by Peter Dutton yesterday,
Speaker 1: which would see nuclear power plants built at seven sites
Speaker 1: around Australia, including two in Queensland and one in Victoria.
Speaker 1: Peter Dutton, at a press conference yesterday announced the plan,
Speaker 1: promising it would provide cheap energy to households, but refusing
Speaker 1: to say when he would reveal the cost of it all.
Speaker 1: And Russian President Vladimir Putin has visited the capital of
Speaker 1: North Korea, meeting with leader Kim Jong un, with the
Speaker 1: two expected to announce treaties strengthening ties between their two nations.
Speaker 1: The US State Department says it believes the visit is
Speaker 1: a sign of desperation on the part of the Russian president,
Speaker 1: looking to strengthen his remaining alliances after the invasion of
Speaker 1: Ukraine led to sanction and severed other diplomatic ties. That's
Speaker 1: all from the team at seven am for today. My
Speaker 1: name is Ashlin McGee. Thank you for your company. I'll
Speaker 1: see you again tomorrow.