A whistleblowing former tax officer has told a South Australian court he suffers from complex post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his time employed at the Australian Taxation Office (ATO).
Richard Boyle, 46, is accused of 24 offences, including recording and disclosing public information, stemming from his decision to tell the ABC about unethical government debt recovery techniques at the ATO.
Mr Boyle, who worked as a debt collection officer at the ATO, today took to the witness stand in South Australia's District Court as part of a bid to be declared immune from prosecution as a whistleblower.
It is the first major test case of protections available under the Public Interest Disclosure Act.
While giving evidence, Mr Boyle, who worked at the ATO for 14 years, began to tear up as he told the court he had experienced complex PTSD and "spent a few years in bed" because of how he and taxpayers were treated.
He recalled a 2017 meeting in which staff were allegedly told to issue more severe "garnishee orders" – a legal notice demanding debt payments – to taxpayers.
He said he feared the directive by senior management "would cause suicide and death in the community on a massive scale".
"We were instructed to skip a point-in-time garnishee issuing … and go straight to standard garnishees," he said.
Mr Boyle told the court he had no intention to follow the instruction because he was "stressed about the effect this was going to have on taxpayers".
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