In April 2017, Richard Boyle was at the Australian Taxation Office building in Adelaide when his work phone rang. Boyle was a long-time employee of the ATO and had grown increasingly concerned about the draconian debt recovery tactics he and his colleagues were being ordered to deploy against taxpayers. On the other end of the phone was one such taxpayer – later referred to in court documents as “Mr CC”.
Mr CC owed the ATO about $80,000. During that phone call, Mr CC told Boyle he had been hospitalised following a severe illness, which led to his business being shut down. “He had no assets, work or income,” a judge would later recount. “His wife was on maternity leave following the birth of their third child. He was struggling with his mental health due to financial pressures and had attempted suicide.”
Boyle gave Mr CC a reprieve – he exercised his discretion as a debt recovery officer to recommend that the ATO temporarily not pursue the debt, with the monies repayable at a later date. Boyle’s recommendation was accepted. Concerned by the increasingly hardline position being taken at the ATO, however, Boyle did something else once the call ended. The public servant took out his mobile phone and took two photographs of the information on his computer monitor: notes of his call with Mr CC and a case summary.
Boyle would later give evidence that he took the photos to inform a public interest disclosure – a formal whistleblowing report, under federal public sector...
George Gilbert, who was removed from Big Brother last week, has spent the last day revealing the horrific things he said that led to his ejection from the house. And if I was his publicist, I’d ha...