Peter Whish-Wilson (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Very briefly, I would also like to congratulate the committee for all their fantastic work. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to participate in a lot of the hearings, but they did a really good job. This is an extremely important matter. It takes a lot of courage to blow the whistle, no matter where you are. It takes even more courage, and something entirely different, to rage against the machine, because that's inevitably what you are going to have to do. By machine, I mean significant resources, very deep pockets.

One thing I was particularly pleased about with this report was that the committee considered and recommended a financial reward scheme, a bounty-style scheme. My experience is that, once you blow the whistle, effectively, you should almost be pensioned off. It's going to be that difficult to stay in an organisation or even get employment again. It is a very significant matter for a lot of people. The financial rewards and compensation, essentially, are to provide you with an annuity until you're old—because that's what you're going to need. If you look at the statistics about what happens to whistleblowers, that is exactly what you will need. You will virtually have to be pensioned off, not to mention all the medical bills, the duress, the stress, the mental health issues and other issues that you are going to face. We need to provide every possible incentive we can to protect whistleblowers within a framework that balances the risk for the organisations that those whistleblowers are blowing the whistle on. We need to do everything we can to provide a framework and good legislation.

My final comments would be that we do some great work in this chamber, we really do, along with our staff, who are all here today—the committee staff, the ministerial staff. We do some fantastic work but, so often, the work we do doesn't get put into legislation. So we have a great report before us and, no doubt, all of us are going to have to continue to work and hustle so that we can actually get this legislation through. I look forward to seeing the government's response. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.