As Australian musicologist Professor Peter Tregear testified during a 12 August 2025 Senate inquiry hearing into governance at universities, and specifically in respect to his time as head of the Australian National University (ANU) School of Music, he made clear that whistleblower protections that are failing public sector workers elsewhere are also negatively impacting the tertiary sector.
“Whistleblowing of all kinds is not just discouraged,” Tregear said in reference to the culture at ANU, “it is actively suppressed, by, for instance, the habitual mishandling of public interest disclosures or the misuse of nondisclosure agreements.” And he added that this approach to complaints permits bullying, while “poor behaviour does not lead to negative consequences”.
Having been appointed head of the ANU music school in 2012, and charged with resolving internal difficulties within the institution, Tregear lodged three public interest disclosures with the university over 2016 to 2018, after his 2015 resignation, with 11 senior staff named as having misused funds or having left conflicts of interest undisclosed, and the ANU then mishandled these internal inquiries.
Tregear raised this issue afresh last week, after having initially aired his complaints in a submission to a 2022 bill amending the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (Cth) (PID Act), which is the Act that provides protections for public sector employees who expose government corruption. And these initial reforms were...
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