Ivana Bacik (Independent)

I was glad to hear the Minister state that he consulted the Parliamentary Counsel on this. There is a significant difference between the terms "opinion" and "suspicion". In criminal law, opinion evidence means something very specific and relates to expertise and a certain level of knowledge whereas suspicion requires a much lesser degree of knowledge or expertise.

When talking about whistleblower protection, we need to ensure the perception is that people will be protected if they disclose matters in good faith, in particular where they believe corruption is going on in their organisation or they believe there is fraud by an employer or colleagues in an organisation. The difficulty is that if it appears people are only protected if they have gone to the trouble of forming an opinion or have particular expertise, it may put them off from disclosing.

I am grateful to Senator Norris for reminding us of the enormous sacrifice whistleblowers have had to make in the past. Yet they have served an enormous public value by blowing the whistle on corrupt practices in organisations. We must ensure not only that legal protection is afforded to such people but that there is a perception that whistleblowers will be protected. That will encourage people to come forward.

The Department's paper on organised and white collar crime indicates that in the US, financial incentives are now being introduced for whistleblowers to encourage people to blow the whistle, emphasising the public value of whistleblowing. Transparency International suggested that in our legislation, just and equitable rewards should be made to whistleblowers subject to reprisals. There should be a perception as well as legal protection afforded to people, even where they do not have a degree of expertise or the idea may be that such people have not a fully informed opinion. That is why we proposed the amendment dealing with suspicion.

On the more general point about generic legislation versus sectoral legislation, in 2006 the Government came to the decision described by the Minister. On the Attorney General's advice it was decided that individual statutes may be a more appropriate way to afford protection to whistleblowers. I am grateful to the Minister for providing what is almost a full list of those statutes. The counterargument is that where there is specific legislation affording whistleblower protection of the sort described, gaps can emerge. Just because we have protection in the Chemicals Act or Charities Act, for example, this does not mean there are no areas in which there is no protection. The great advantage of a general protection law is that it does not allow for those sorts of gaps.

In Britain the Public Interest Disclosure Act 1998 provides a cross-sectoral basis for whistleblower protection and contains general provisions enabling protection for disclosures made to employers, regulators, police and even members of parliament. That is the sort of general protection we might consider introducing here, with general provisions made to ensure protection from reprisals, whistleblowers who are victimised or dismissed can claim compensation and so forth. I do not see why we cannot have a general provision in the same way.

I accept that this is a slightly bigger issue than what we are dealing with here. I welcome this protection, as far as it goes, although there are difficulties with maintaining this position on sectoral protection only.