How the law deals with whistleblowers is very much in the news. Last week in Adelaide, after a long legal battle, Australian Tax Office whistleblower Richard Boyle pleaded guilty to four charges. In Canberra, Australian Defence Force whistleblower David McBride lost his appeal against the severity of his sentence. Next week in Sydney, Lendlease whistleblower Tony Watson will be in court seeking damages for retaliation, that he says he experienced after he made a tax-related disclosure.
00:00Richard Boyle worked as a debt collector at the ATO, the Australian Tax Office in Adelaide,
00:08and he raised concerns internally about what he regarded as heavy-handed tactics used against people who owed money to the ATO.
00:17And he raised his concerns internally, they got nowhere, so he decided to go to Four Corners in October 2017.
00:26And post the broadcast, I think two independent inquiries confirmed his concerns,
00:30and the ATO actually changed its strategies about how it dealt with people who owed it money.
00:36But regardless, Boyle was charged with, I think, 66 charges initially, and they were eventually whittled down to four.
00:44And they included disclosing protected information, making a record of protected information,
00:48using a listening device to record private conversations, and recording another person's tax file number.
00:53Now, Richard Boyle argued that he should have immunity under the Public Interest Disclosure Act
01:00because what he did was a bona fide whistleblower act.
01:04But this was denied by the courts, and they found that whistleblowing protection only applies
01:13when you're making a disclosure publicly to the media.
01:16They don't apply to these internal disclosure processes for which he made these documents and copies.
01:25So, Boyle, after this decision came down late last year, Boyle had to plead guilty, and that's what he's done.
01:33And that's what he did last week, and he'll face a sentencing in, I think, August this year.
01:39Also last week, Damien, Australian Defence Force whistleblower David McBride had his appeal rejected.
01:46Why?
01:47So, David McBride is a former army lawyer, and he's currently in jail serving an almost six-year prison sentence.
01:55Now, he provided classified documents to the ABC because he was concerned that Australian soldiers in Afghanistan
02:04were being wrongfully accused of war crimes by their superiors.
02:09Now, as it turned out, the documents that McBride provided to the ABC helped establish that, in fact,
02:17Australian soldiers were carrying out unlawful acts, unlawful killings.
02:23So McBride's disclosures were absolutely instrumental in exposing very, very serious wrongdoing.
02:34But his appeal against both the severity of the sentence and the conviction itself were unsuccessful.
02:45He argued that he was compelled by a higher duty to do what was right, but this was rejected by the courts.
02:53And David McBride's conviction and sentence stands as of last week, and he now has to go to the High Court and seek leave to appeal.
03:01Whether that will happen is another matter.
03:02And next week, Damien, in Sydney, a significant trial will begin involving whistleblower Tony Watson.
03:09So why is he taking action against his former employer?
03:13So Tony Watson is a very well-regarded tax lawyer.
03:18When he realised that his major client, construction giant Lend-Lease, was double-dipping in its tax deductions, he told the company, who ignored his warning.
03:31And at that point, he felt obliged to approach the ATO and tell them what was happening, to blow the whistle, essentially.
03:38And the ATO ended up issuing, I think it was Lend-Lease, with a $112 million amended tax assessment.
03:46So the public coffers are now $100 million better off, thanks to his whistleblowing.
03:51Tony Watson says that when he made his internal complaints, his employer, a law firm, and Lend-Lease both retaliated against him.
04:02He was dumped from the Lend-Lease account and his employer essentially terminated him.
04:06So he's going to court next week in Sydney to sue them both for damages, for retaliating against him.
04:14But this is, Ros, this is a David and Goliath struggle.
04:19You've got two very well-resourced, big end-of-town defendants up against a man who now has very limited resources because he's thrown everything he owns at this very expensive litigation.
04:30So it will be very interesting to see what happens.
04:32And what do whistleblower advocates then see as the common threads in these three cases?
04:39The Human Rights Law Centre and other advocates for whistleblowers say these three cases, all, you know, happening right now, they expose the flaws and the gaps in our whistleblower protections.
04:52Australia has nine different federal laws relating to whistleblowers, as well as individual legislation in each of the states and territories.
05:00And they all impact on whistleblowers, and we desperately need to update them and make them consistent and to give whistleblowers real protection.
05:09And that's good for them and it's good for the rest of us.
05:11There we are.
05:18Here we are.
05:21Here we are.
05:21Here we are.
05:23Here we are.
05:25You're not going to have a knock on wood.
05:26You're not going to aplآ EP.
05:29There we are.
05:29Let's look at a knock on wood, and let's go into the building.
Be the first to comment