Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about the Public Interest Disclosure Bill 2013 and trying to progress it over these final two weeks as a matter of priority and urgency. I am increasingly worried that we may not get there, for all the wrong reasons, such as senior executives within government potentially worrying that this is somehow an attack on them, is somehow going to encourage employees in the APS to run some sort of public sector revolution by leaking every single issue that they deal with, and in some way will lead to poorer government. On the contrary, the reason I rise tonight is to say that nothing could be further from the truth and to try and put in place some reminders about the first principles of the importance of whistleblowing reform for best practice within the public sector. Just as the House passed legislation today to try to establish better practices through the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Bill and rolling the FMA Act and the CAC Act into the one piece of legislation to deal with greater autonomy for the 196 Commonwealth bodies and agencies and to put in place better risk management principles for all those bodies and agencies, this is no different.

This is about building best practice and best culture within the human capital that makes up the Australian Public Service. It is not radical. The ideas of whistleblowing have been around for some time in both the public and the private sectors. There is actually now an Australian standard on whistleblower protection programs for entities. For the wonks in the room, the Australian standard was published as AS 8004-2003. That is both for the business and civil side of society to follow, and there is no reason why the Australian public sector should not commit to those same Australian standards of best practice that all others are seeking to do. Other levels of government should do likewise, New South Wales for example, and I understand Queensland passed public interest disclosure acts in September and October 2010. This is common practice, and common practice for good reason.

Four issues I wanted to outline and remind government of, from my point of view, are the following. The first is that, if organisations do not manage whistleblowing effectively, it is now well known that complaints are more likely to be taken outside the organisation, including into the public domain, leading to greater conflict, embarrassment and cost. It has taken three years for agreements to be reached with government to try and get whistleblower legislation to this point, and we are now down to the final two weeks. Senior agency figures are worried that this is going to lead to more information being in the public domain, but it is actually the opposite that is trying to be achieved. To deal with whistleblowers effectively internally means fewer of these issues have to be spilt into the public domain, and there will be less conflict, less embarrassment and more reputation-building for the agencies involved.

The second is that organisations that support employees in fulfilling their duty to report concerns are more likely to become known as good workplaces and employers of choice, while organisations that do not are more likely to become liable for failing to provide employees with a safe, healthy and professional working environment. Surely that is a no-brainer: we want an environment where the very best in human capital work for the Australian Public Service. The third is that public sector agencies are increasingly subject to specific statutory obligations to manage whistleblowing to a high standard as part of their jurisdictions' public integrity systems. So, in annual reporting, in oversight, in the whole range of integrity measures that are already in place, this is not adding to the burden of reporting too much. If anything, this is empowering employees culturally through an entire organisation to participate in building and owning the culture of good governance within that agency or body.

The fourth, which is actually the one I think is the most important, is that it is increasingly accepted that employee reporting is often the most effective and fastest way for senior management of organisations to become aware of problems in their organisation. We would all know of war stories of senior management of agencies and bodies being the last to know about something going on within that agency or body, and that senior management, when something does blow up, just wishing they had known earlier so they could have dealt with it in a more appropriate way. To build that culture within agencies and bodies is exactly what this legislation is trying to achieve. That can be achieved by senior management in a number of different ways. We could be arguing the case to try to establish some sort of national independent commission against corruption or some sort of outside independent reporting body, which some states have done. But there seems to be some resistance at a federal level, for some justifiable reasons, to not go down that path. We could look at hardware and software systems—the non-human capital systems—which I know have been built into many agencies and bodies, and spend a bucketload of money pursuing all of the spyware that we can think of to achieve the anticorruption standards that we are looking for. Or we could put in place legislation that has been sitting in this House and that is in danger of not making it through this chamber and invest in human capital in the Australian Public Service, as the cheapest way but most respectful way of engaging every single employee in the APS in the role of lifting, enhancing and creating a governance standard that we all desire. If everyone owns it, the culture is at its best and if senior executives have nothing to worry about, then this is the most effective model possible.

I raise this matter tonight for one other reason. Last week, I saw some extraordinary reports coming out of the US, saying that government as a body was data mining private sector companies. The comment 'spying' was used, and we can call it spying; I do not know the exact definition of that. Trolling or trawling through all of this information that private companies hold of their citizens should be of great concern to all of us. In fact, there are many Australians who may have communicated with friends, relatives, business associates and any number of contacts in the US that may very well have had that contact trawled over and considered by various agencies of the US government.

That is of great concern and for that reason, as well as all the reasons of best standards within the public sector, we should not put ourselves in the position of just trusting government. We should invest in people as part of being government and by investing in people, through mechanisms like whistleblowing, we are doing the best that we can to minimise corruption and build a culture of a governance standard that taxpayers and Australian citizens quite rightly expect. My call tonight is to urge government to progress the public interest disclosure legislation. Do not let it lapse. This does matter. It is good practice. It sits well alongside existing reforms and it is a good opportunity to progress a long-lasting reform that really does matter.