Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) whistleblowers play an important role in exposing wrongdoing, as evidenced by the heroic efforts of David McBride, Richard Boyle, Witness K, Bernard Collaery and Troy Stolz; and

(b) protections for whistleblowers in the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 and Corporations Act 2001 remain grossly inadequate; and

(2) calls on the Government to:

(a) urgently reform the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 and Corporations Act 2001 to ensure that protections for whistleblowers are strong, comprehensive and fit for purpose; and

(b) establish an empowered and well-resourced Whistleblower Protection Commissioner to facilitate the effective implementation and enforcement of whistleblower protections.

Whistleblowers are an essential part of our democracy because they reveal important information in the public interest, information otherwise concealed despite the fact that it is often to do with the most egregious incompetence or misconduct. For instance, Alan Kessing exposed lax security at Sydney Airport. Toni Hoffman spoke up about Dr Patel. Witness K and Bernard Collaery blew the whistle on the East Timor scandal. Troy Stolz told us ClubsNSW's dirty secrets. Right now Richard Boyle and David McBride are in the courts over their ATO and war crime revelations.

Today I bring to the parliament's attention another brave whistleblower, an executive from the Australian coal industry who has provided me with thousands of documents that prove Australian companies have been lying for years about the quality of our coal. That's important because the fraud is environmental vandalism and makes all the talk of net zero emissions by 2050 fiction. It could also be criminal, trashing corporate reputations as well as our national reputation.

In essence, coal companies operating in Australia are using fraudulent quality reports for their exports and paying bribes to representatives of their overseas customers to keep the whole scam secret. This has allowed them to claim for years that Australian coal is cleaner than it is in order to boost profits and to prevent rejection of shipments at their destination.

This shocking misconduct includes exports to Japan, South Korea, China and India, and it involves companies including TerraCom, Anglo American, Glencore, Peabody and the Macquarie Bank. The misconduct also includes the ALS company, which has already been forced to admit its fraudulent testing to the ASX when it conceded that 'approximately 45 to 50 per cent of the certificates of analysis were manually amended without justification.' Moreover, the other key coal testing company in Australia, SGS, also commits fraud at a similar rate. For example, in the draft results in this SGS coal test the moisture content is 16.7%. That is pretty damp, and it won't burn well. But here, in the final version of the SGS document, the exact same testing puts the moisture content at 15.9%, which is drier and burns much cleaner. That represents hundreds of thousands of dollars in extra profit from that relatively small shipment to Japan and ensured that it wouldn't be rejected on arrival.

The coal executive whistleblower also alleges that global accounting firms such as Ernst & Young are aware of all this and choose to ignore it because the coal companies are lucrative. As a result of all this, I call on the government to establish—at least—a parliamentary inquiry into the matter, one where the witnesses of this misconduct, including the whistleblower I'm in contact with, can safely present their testimonies and evidence, and where the industry can explain itself. To that end, I also reach out to my crossbench colleagues to support such an inquiry and call on the opposition to support the move as well.

I know that the easy political response from the government would be to say that these allegations need to be examined by the relevant regulatory and law enforcement agencies, just like what the previous government said about the casino industry as I rolled out the evidence against Crown year after year. But the scandalous fact is that this coal executive whistleblower's allegations have already been put to the Australian Federal Police; the New South Wales Police; the Australian Securities and Investments Commission; the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources; and even the former federal government. And so far no authority, not one, has been willing to act on this alleged criminal behaviour, despite the fact that select evidence has already been presented in Australian courts proving what this whistleblower says is true.

So this time, please, lets ditch the game plan and go straight to an inquiry so that the industry can be held accountable for its sins and so Australia can restore its reputation as an honest trading partner. And, most importantly, so we can learn just how dirty the world is and how much more urgent our response to climate change must be. And let's also start genuinely celebrating and supporting whistleblowers, starting with strengthening the Public Interest Disclosure Act and the Corporation Act, and establishing a whistleblower commission. On that final note, I seek leave to table the two coal quality reports I have referred to.

Leave granted.

See this speech in context