Queensland Labor fails to act on laws to protect whistleblowers

Steven Miles’s Labor government has failed to act for more than a year on A review it commissioned to better protect public service whistleblowers.

Queensland Premier Steven Miles in Rockhampton. Picture: Adam Head

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Steven Miles’s Labor government has failed to act for more than a year on the “game-changing ­review” it commissioned to better protect public service whistleblowers.

Led by former judge Alan Wilson KC, the review proposed an overhaul of Queensland’s public sector whistleblowing legislation, including stronger support and protections for bureaucrats who call out corruption.

His 309-page report, published in August last year, made 107 ­recommendations to the state Labor government, none of which has been acted on.

The adequacy of Queensland’s whistleblower laws have come under scrutiny after revelations by The Australian that a senior parole board lawyer had launched explosive legal action claiming she was pushed out of her job after ­accusing a colleague of corruptly pressuring a Supreme Court judge into burying a judgment.

Louise Benjamin, who was acting director of legal services at the parole board, alleges that managers at the authority, including acting president Julie Sharp, retaliated against her for making a whistleblower complaint.

Mr Miles would not be drawn on why Ms Sharp was not ­immediately suspended, pending the outcome of legal action.

Liberal National Party justice spokesman Tim Nicholls said there were “obviously” many problems at the parole board, which had been “shrouded in competence by a dysfunctional Labor government”.

The state’s ombudsman is in charge of administering whistleblower laws, but it is a secondary function of the agency and Mr Wilson found the agency had been “underfunded for many years” compared with those in NSW and Victoria.

“Although the review heard about the good work the ­ombudsman does as the oversight agency for the act with limited ­resources, it has concluded that the PID scheme could be much more effectively overseen by the ombudsman if it was properly resourced,” he wrote.

Transparency International chair AJ Brown, a professor of public policy and law at Griffith University, said reforms were “long overdue” and called on both major parties to commit to introducing legislation within a year.

Professor Brown said Queensland needed a “dedicated, specialist, appropriately resourced” whistleblower protection commissioner to drive enforcement of the regime and be able to independently investigate claims of whistleblower reprisal.

“The inadequate state of the public sector whistleblower protection regime is now the single biggest missing link in Queensland’s public integrity and ­accountability system,” he told The Australian.

While praising some integrity reforms undertaken by the Labor ­government during its three terms in power, Professor Brown said it was “clearly highly regrettable that it was not a sufficient ­priority for the current government to make more progress on this huge gap, in the 16 months since the Wilson review was ­handed down”.

“It is vital that whoever is in government after Saturday make reform in this area a high priority,” he said.

A spokeswoman for Mr Miles said the government broadly ­supported Mr Wilson’s recommendations and the Justice ­Department had been “working through the report findings to ­develop new legislation”.

She said laws would be ­introduced sometime in the next four years.

Mr Nicholls said an LNP ­government would be “committed to delivering whistleblower protections and restoring integrity to government”.

“While Labor has deliberately dropped the ball on whistleblower protections because their heart has never been in it, the LNP will introduce a new PID Act to better protect whistleblowers who call out wrongdoing,” Mr Nicholls said.

“Countless whistleblowers have spoken out in the past four years, despite fear of reprisals and at great personal and professional risk, because they believe in letting the sun shine in on government.”