Clear support to whistleblowers is an absolute necessity

NXT Senator Rex Patrick congratules Alex Turnbull after revelations today that he blew the whistle on questionable bank conduct while he was working for Goldman Sachs in Singapore back in 2013. 

“Whistleblowers aren’t always good people, more often than not they are the best people, and we must protect them,” said Rex.

“There must be strong whistleblower protections in the corporate sector.”

Senator Patrick’s call comes after a Senate inquiry on Tuesday revealed that the language in the current legislation before the Parliament is ambiguous and confusing and the provisions as they currently stand do not meet the ‘Jeff Morris’ test.

“Whilst the legislation is a step in the right direction, the wording needs to be tightened to provide absolute certainty for the whistleblower. Without doing that, we will end up seeing poorly resourced whistleblowers battling it out in the courts against highly resourced companies over the meaning and intent. If lawyers and judges are needed to sort out the interpretation, we haven't done our job properly,” said Rex.

“The legislation will have to be amended so that there is no doubt as to a corporation’s responsibility to protect a whistleblower or to properly compensate them if they don't.”

The Committee also heard from a number of witnesses that the proposed provisions on external whistleblowing (i.e. going to the media when the regulators don’t do their job) must change.

“The bar is set way too high,” said Rex. 

The new laws come as a result of negotiations between the Government and Nick Xenophon in 2016.

Jeff Morris, a CBA whistleblower, summed up the inadequacy of the proposed laws when he told the inquiry that whistleblowers are human beings taking on massive corporate machines and the proposed legislation doesn't go far enough to protect them. 

“ We have to get these laws right,” said Rex.