Whistleblowers in Australia spoke of being subjected to psychiatric reviews and multimillion dollar lawsuits after speaking up about wrongdoing. Photo: AP Photo/Virginia Mayo

Prosecution, social stigma and reputation destruction awaits those who dare to publicly highlight wrongdoing in Australian institutions.

Gerd Schröder-Turk was on a long-haul flight to Luxembourg in 2019 when he broke down while watching the film Pretty Woman.

The 1990 classic is hardly a tearjerker, and Schröder-Turk, a professor of maths and statistics at Murdoch University in Perth, Australia, is hardly one to be emotional. But the events of recent months had come at an enormous cost to his mental state. He had just received news that he was being sued for more money than his entire life's earnings. Schröder-Turk and his young family were now staring down the barrel of financial ruin.

“I found it very hard to accept that someone who knew me would be willing to take an action that they knew would threaten my livelihood,” the academic told VICE World News.

As the gravity of his situation sank in at 42,000 feet, Schröder-Turk was confronted with the unsettling truth that this “intimidatory and existential personal attack” was revenge for speaking out in defense of the students he cared so deeply for.

In May 2019, just a few months earlier, he appeared on ABC’s Four Corners to blow the whistle on Murdoch University waiving standard English language proficiency requirements in order to allow more...

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