The ongoing prosecutions of public sector whistleblowers Richard Boyle and David McBride will have a “chilling effect” on public servants thinking about coming forward, according to a press freedom advocate.
Speaking at the National Press Club, journalist Peter Greste said the cases of Boyle and McBride were the most prominent in the country at the moment.
“If you are a civil servant, you’re sitting on on something that you know is wrong, that you’re contemplating going to the media,” Greste said.
“You’re seeing, on the one hand, the fairly technical changes that have been made so far, the rhetoric coming out of the Attorney General’s office, which is encouraging on one level.
“But then on the other, you see the kind of suffering that David McBride and Richard Boyle have both experienced: the cost of their careers, the financial damage, the emotional stress, the trauma that they have been through, and the fact that they are both about to be in court and quite likely, wind up in prison.”
Looking at the consequences for speaking up, Greste thinks the two cases will likely “undo any of the work that the attorney general is doing to try and support this”.
McBride is being prosecuted for providing the ABC with details about war crimes by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan, while Boyle is facing potential jail time for alleging that the Australian Taxation Office’s had aggressive debt collection tactics.
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