Australia’s failure to adopt proven whistleblower protections is costing taxpayers billions in lost fraud recoveries and leaving those who expose corruption without adequate support, writes Dr Kim Sawyer.
CHARLES BABBAGE is often seen as the founder of computing and possibly artificial intelligence.
Babbage was Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University between 1828 and 1839, the Professorship that was held by Newton and Hawking. Babbage is best known for the invention of an analytical engine, a calculating machine that was the ancestor of the modern computer.
In those days, Cambridge was known as the Holy City of Mathematics. Babbage was religious with a strong commitment to benevolence. His views were detailed in a little-known volume of musings about how his machine may proxy God, perhaps a preamble to arguments about AI.
The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise has one section that reads like a parable of whistleblowing:
Let us suppose the wealthy resident near a small village, returning from the neighbouring town, to have observed from a distance that the bridge across a rapid stream has been carried away by a flood, and that the blind postman who makes his daily journey along the causeway to the neighbouring town, unconscious of what has happened, is just approaching the torrent. Setting spurs to his horse, he dashes forward, and clearing the broken bridge, has just time to alight and catch the postman on the verge of destruction.
Let us now suppose another village,...
A journalist who spread false information about the family of then-presidential candidate Lee Jae Myung ahead of the 21st presidential election was fined. The Dae-gu District Court Andong Branch C...