It’s almost 2 and a half years since new whistleblower protections were introduced in Australia on 1 July 2019 (see our analysis here), and almost 2 years since public and large proprietary companies were required to have in place a whistleblower policy.

ASIC had foreshadowed that it would monitor compliance with the new provisions, and set up an “Office of the Whistleblower” around the time the laws were introduced.

Over two years on, ASIC has released a range of relevant materials and statistics which, in ASIC’s view, demonstrate that companies have more work to do on whistleblowing. Summarised below are some of the messages recently released by ASIC.

ASIC’s “call to action for Australian CEOs”

On 13 October 2021, ASIC wrote a letter (available here) to the CEOs of various entities. The letter stated that, during 2020, ASIC reviewed a sample of whistleblower policies. ASIC observed that the majority of those policies did not appear to include the information required by the Corporations Act.

ASIC called on CEOs to:

• discuss ASIC’s letter within each CEO’s organisation, and appropriately review the organisation’s whistleblower policy;
• review Regulatory Guide 270: “Whistleblower policies” (RG 270) (available here). Our update on ASIC’s Information Sheet 247 (INFO 247) is available here. Information Sheet 247 contains guidance on company officer’s obligations under the whistleblower protection provisions; and
• review “other parts” of an organisation’s whistleblowing “...

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