Gerard Rennick (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise because I believe we do need better whistleblower protection laws in this country. In particular, I'm speaking from the experience of having been contacted by many whistleblowers in our bureaucracy in my time as a senator. These people aren't known to the public. For example, one Sunday night I was approached as I got off a plane at Canberra Airport by a bureaucrat, who'd sat there all afternoon waiting to meet me because he had information that was contrary to what was in the public domain and being reported by the public. He is one of three whistleblowers who have approached me on various issues.

The fact of the matter is that we have a culture of fear in our Australian bureaucracy, and we cannot get the best out of our government if our bureaucrats are afraid to speak out. I often criticise the bureaucracy, but I know there are many good people in the bureaucracy who try to do the right thing but know that if they speak out they will lose their job or that their career progression will be halted. It was interesting: the other day I heard someone mention the term 'small-c corruption'. It made me think about it, because you often hear the word 'corruption' thrown around, and we tend to think of it as being brown paper bags exchanging hands, but in many ways it's just that often people don't speak up when they should. There's no doubt that, if we're going to stop what we're doing every day and try to fight every level of injustice that we see in the world, we'd never get anything done. But I don't consider that small-c corruption. What I consider small-c corruption is when people who have a fiduciary duty to do the right thing, when they're in a position of power, don't do the right thing in that position. That is what we see a lot. I've seen this time and time throughout the bureaucracy, most notably in estimates, where the bureaucrats won't answer questions properly, or when we pass an order for the production of documents here in this chamber and basically we're told, 'No, you can't have it.'

Just today, less than an hour ago, I was in the Economics Legislation Committee, because I want the RBA to release information on the gold bars from the Bank of England. Why? Because I believe that the RBA should be held accountable for their management of it. But, of course, the RBA put this big word, 'confidential', on the top of the page, and they're claiming that they have the right to withhold that information from the Australian people.

In particular, in regard to Senator Shoebridge's motion, I want to raise what is being done at the moment to Richard Boyle, a former ATO employee, who blew the whistle on the unjust and unfair treatment of small businesses by the Australian Taxation Office. It is absolutely reprehensible that the Australian government is going after this guy. He is out there. I'm calling on the Liberal Party to take a stand on that, because we're supposed to believe in protecting small business. We have people out there who are risking their jobs. He's now incurring hundreds of thousands of dollars just in legal costs to defend his position.

We are not going to have a true democracy. Democracy is all about accountability and transparency, and we are not going to have that when we have this culture of fear throughout the government, and in the private sector as well, where, if you speak up or speak out, your career is curtailed or, as I'm sure has happened in many cases, you lose their job. We have to make sure there are genuine whistleblower protections out there so that people who try to stand up and do the right thing are protected.