Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I seek leave to move the following motion:

That the House:

(1) notes with very real concern that the criminal trial of whistleblower David McBride has commenced today and that this brave and principled Australian faces the very real prospect of jail for telling the public the truth about potential war crimes committed by the Australian Defence Forces in Afghanistan; and

(2) calls on the Attorney-General to urgently use his powers under the Judiciary Act to end this prosecution and by doing so provide a clear message to whistleblowers around the country that the truth matters to the Australian Government.

Leave not granted.

I move:

That so much of the standing orders be suspended as would prevent the Member for Brisbane from moving the following motion:

That the House:

(1) notes with very real concern that the criminal trial of whistleblower David McBride has commenced today and that this brave and principled Australian faces the very real prospect of jail for telling the public the truth about potential war crimes committed by the Australian Defence Forces in Afghanistan; and

(2) calls on the Attorney-General to urgently use his powers under the Judiciary Act to end this prosecution and by doing so provide a clear message to whistleblowers around the country that the truth matters to the Australian Government.

The trial of David McBride has commenced just a few short kilometres from here in the ACT Supreme Court. David McBride, a brave whistleblower, could not stand by while he had evidence of crimes committed by Australian Defence Force personnel in Afghanistan. But nobody would listen to him. Nobody in his chain of command would act. No-one would commence an investigation into the evidence David McBride had that a group of Australian soldiers had committed war crimes in Afghanistan. He followed the correct processes. He went through the chain of command in the ADF and had every door shut on him. Eventually his sense of duty led him to blow the whistle and tell the media and the public what had happened. Whistleblowers like David are essential to our democracy and in holding our governments and institutions to account. Think of the robodebt scandal and how whistleblowers were silenced, or Richard Boyle, who blew the whistle on appalling practices in the ATO and is being prosecuted despite been vindicated by a Senate inquiry and an internal ATO inquiry.

After blowing the whistle on Australian war crimes in Afghanistan and being vindicated by the Brereton report, which found evidence of dozens of war crimes committed by Australian special forces, it is David McBride, the whistleblower, who is in court today being prosecuted by the government. There is one person who can stop this. That person is the Labor Attorney-General. The Attorney-General has the power to end this with a single pen stroke using section 71 of the Judiciary Act. With a flick of his pen the Attorney-General could end the prosecution of David McBride, who faces the very real prospect of years in jail simply for telling the public the truth about war crimes. While David McBride is facing trial today, not a single member of the ADF who committed the war crimes has been brought to trial. There is one pending prosecution, but the first person to face trial, the first person to face jail, is not one of those who committed the war crimes but the whistleblower. Someone needs to riddle me that. There are clearly exceptional circumstances here where our country's whistleblowing laws have proven incapable of protecting David McBride. The Attorney-General has admitted Australia's whistleblowing laws are broken and do not protect genuine whistleblowers, so why let David McBride suffer? What does Australia stand for when we have compelling evidence of troops committing war crimes and the person we prosecute is the whistleblower?

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