Whistleblowers are vital actors in our democracy, upholding our right to know. Without them – and the public interest journalism they make possible – corruption and human rights abuses go unaddressed. In recent weeks, Senator David Pocock and members of parliament Zoe Daniel and Andrew Wilkie have all given voice to whistleblowers.
Pocock highlighted that an oil spill at a Santos facility in Western Australia had killed dolphins, and that the gas giant covered it up. Daniel told parliament that she had been contacted by whistleblowers working at a youth detention centre in Victoria, where children were allegedly being kept in solitary confinement for up to 22 hours a day. And last week Wilkie, a former whistleblower himself, tabled reams of documents that he said showed fraud and other unlawful conduct at megachurch Hillsong.
Pocock, Daniel and Wilkie were able to make these disturbing claims public because they and their sources were protected by parliamentary privilege, a doctrine dating back centuries that protects the proceedings of parliament. Immediately the disclosures sparked calls for accountability – Santos has commissioned an independent investigation into “Dolphingate”; the charities regulator has said it is investigating Hillsong.
Without whistleblowers, and willing crossbenchers, we might never have heard these allegations of environmental wrongdoing, mistreatment of children or money laundering by a charity.
But whistleblowers shouldn’t have to turn to...
Hyderabad: BRS leader Aedla Sudhakar Reddy strongly criticised the statements of HYDRAA commissioner A.V. Ranganath regarding the status of Bathukammakunta. The official had claimed that the place...