The National Anti-Corruption Commission is pursuing 10 new investigations after excluding 88 per cent of the referrals it has received since July, claiming many submissions fail to involve a commonwealth public official or raise a corruption issue.
But independent MP Helen Haines, who long campaigned for the new federal watchdog, warns that the lack of legal protection for whistleblowers such as David McBride, who pleaded guilty in November to leaking war crimes details, could deter those who know about serious corruption from reporting it.
Independent MP Helen Haines long campaigned for the federal watchdog, and says its success “is contingent upon strong whistleblower protections”.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
“We still have a broken whistleblower protection system in Australia and the success of the NACC is contingent upon strong whistleblower protections,” she said.
“If we don’t have people able to come forward with serious allegations and be protected in doing so, then we’re not going to see the investigations into serious corruption that we need.”
Since the commission began on July 1, it has received 2327 referrals, but 1790 – almost 90 per cent – have already been excluded, as many were duplicates or did not fall under the jurisdiction of the commission.
The commission is currently using its powers to compel the provision of documents and information in 14 preliminary cases to determine if there is a corruption issue worthy of investigation.
A further 10 new cases have been opened by the commission and another four have been referred to other commonwealth agencies.
There are also six active investigations inherited from the former Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity.
No information about the substance of any of the investigations has been made public.
The government says it is committed to “restoring integrity” after passing the Public Interest Disclosure Amendment (Review) bill in June, which gave commonwealth agencies greater flexibility in how they handle disclosures, and provided increased protections and enhanced oversight by the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security.
Haines says more protections are needed because major whistleblower cases such as McBride, who pleaded guilty to leaking confidential information about war crimes investigations to journalists, and Richard Boyle, who blew the whistle on aggressive debt recovery tactics used by the Tax Office, were turned away from their own agencies.
McBride could be sentenced to life in prison for revealing defence secrets when he is sentenced next year for revealing classified defence information.
Boyle will face trial in September 2024 on 24 offences, including photographing tax records and recording conversations, after his bid for whistleblower immunity was dismissed in South Australian courts.
“It should be a top priority to establish a whistleblower protection authority … it’s critical to the success of the NACC,” Haines said.
“People who see wrongdoing need to feel safe in reporting that, and they shouldn’t be the one that ultimately pays the price, and that’s what we’re seeing at the moment with the McBride and Boyle cases.”
A spokesman Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said the government will look at including “effective and accessible protections to public sector whistleblowers”, such as a whistleblower protection authority or commissioner, when considering further amendments to the act.
During the debate of the bill to establish the NACC in November 2022, Haines and the Greens unsuccessfully attempted to amend the legislation to remove or relax the provisions that limited public hearings to “exceptional circumstances”.
“It’s early days and let’s see how the commissioner makes decisions around what is in the public interest or what is an exceptional circumstance that requires a public hearing,” Haines said.
NACC head Paul Brereton told this masthead in July that he will not tolerate attempts to weaponise unfounded referrals, and stressed the watchdog will be fearless and independent.
Referrals to the commission have included former cabinet minister Stuart Robert, consultancy giant PwC, and the government settlement to Brittany Higgins. The commission has not confirmed if any of these cases are under investigation.
Director of the Centre for Public Integrity Geoffrey Watson SC said it was to be expected that no cases would have been made public yet due to the time-consuming nature of corruption investigations.
“They need to make an evaluation as to which [cases] to pursue as a matter of the proper allocation for the limited resources it has, so I’m not surprised at all that nothing has yet emerged,” he said.
Watson warned that as time goes on, corruption investigations will begin to look at the government of the day, which is when the watchdog’s powers will be tested.
“Anti-corruption bodies like these are fragile … as soon as it criticises, it gets too close to political power, you watch the resentment grow,” he said.
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