Reform or Retribution
QWAG submits that the existing legislative, institutional and policy framework simply mirrors the strength of the intention held by ‘government’ to address corruption and serious wrongdoing, both in government, Federal, State and Local, and also in the community.
Governments can be categorised by the position that they adopt between the ‘pole’ of actively reforming serious wrongdoing and systemic wrongdoing in their government, and bringing offenders to justice, and the ‘pole’ of covering up such wrongdoing and ensuring that those who break from that position are punished.
The interest here is about misgovernment or poor government. The phenomenon of whistleblowing arises from a failing government, where ministries function such that serious wrongdoing and systemic wrongdoing develop and grow, causing whistleblowers to step forward. Good government is self-correcting and self-healing, it is proposed.
Good government is about self-correcting and self-healing, not about ignoring failures.
Whistleblowing should not arise where agencies and firms are engaged with parties involved with disclosures, where the intent is to correct wrongdoing, its causes and symptoms, and to heal any hurt to any of the parties.
This interest is strategic, because serious and/or systemic wrongdoing are areas of government that governments of all persuasions have found most difficult, if not impossible, for themselves to address.
It is only the rare examples, such as by Premier Steele Hall in South Australia (late 1960s), and by Acting Premier Bill Gunn in Queensland (1987), both decades ago, that gives one confidence that some governments can address the issue of systemic corruption at all.
The tone of current governments in Australia on reform of corruption may be best exemplified by the way that principal watchdog authorities have performed their roles in the investigation of disclosures made by whistleblowers, and in protecting whistleblowers from reprisals.
Those watchdogs are the Offices of Ombudsman and the standing crime/integrity commissions from most governments across Australia.
How have the watchdog authorities performed? A significant moment in the relationship between whistleblowers and the governments that whistleblowers serve, came with the completion of the Whistle While They Work (WWTW) research Study into whistleblowing.
Watchdog authorities served on the Steering Committee for and as partners to the WWTW study conducted by several universities in Australia. This Study essentially was a survey into the responses taken by agencies towards disclosures of alleged corruption and maladministration within their own organisations.
At the time of release of the results of the completed WWTW study, one watchdog authority and chair of the Steering Committee, Queensland’s CMC, issued a media release claiming that bad treatment of whistleblowers was a ‘myth’.
A ‘myth’ is defined in the Oxford Dictionary as ‘Purely fictitious narrative usually involving supernatural persons, etc, and embodying popular ideas on natural phenomena etc’. The media release appeared to rely on the results of the WWTW study to support the ‘myth’ claim.
The WWTW study did not do many favours for whistleblowers. Relevant to the CMC’s ‘myth’ claim, the report on the WWTW did describe the principal whistleblower studies in the literature, both popular and academic, as ‘mythical tales’ and ‘popular stereotypes’.
The methodology used by the WWTW also had limitations for what the Study could claim from its research surveys – principally, the study did not include in its survey former public servants who had made disclosures and were no longer in the workplace … and the report on the Study acknowledged this.
Therefore the study could not legitimately state figures on whistleblowers who were terminated or forced out of their jobs after making disclosures. Unfortunately, the WWTW did state that the ‘sacking’ of whistleblowers was ‘unlikely’, even though the methodology used by the study did not enable the Study to make any comment from the survey results about those who had left the organisation.
This CMC claim to the media, that bad treatment of whistleblowers was a ‘myth’, appeared to rely on the particular survey used by the Study where survey respondents self-nominated as whistleblowers.
This survey, with its methodological limitations, came up with a figure that only 22% of whistleblowers met with bad treatment. In the Study’s defence, however, two matters need reciting.
Firstly, the Study also did a survey of ‘known whistleblowers’, where, with the same methodological limitations, the percentage of known whistleblowers who received bad treatment was 66%. In compiling their claim of the bad treatment ‘myth’, however, the CMC preferred the 22% figure from the self-nominating whistleblowers rather than the 66% figure from the known whistleblowers.
Secondly, years later, a principal researcher from the study denied that any of its researchers ever claimed that bad treatment of whistleblowers was a ‘myth’. That principal researcher also described the ‘myth’ claim as ‘preposterous’.
It is unfortunate that that researcher’s name appeared on the CMC claim.
Nevertheless, the ‘myth’ claim was made at the time by the watchdog authority that served as chair on the Steering Committee for the Study, and the damage was done.
QWAG submits that, while the WWTW Study did not survey terminated whistleblowers, the watchdog authorities such as the CMC have been approached by many whistleblowers in this circumstance, seeking protection.
The watchdog authorities may have failed that study by not addressing the shortcoming in its outcome, the flaw in its methodology, and the illegitimacy of particular statements made in its report.
The watchdog authorities may then have sought to benefit from the shortcoming by making the bad treatment ‘myth’ claim, which claim was clearly ‘preposterous’.
There appears to have been a second shortcoming in the study that was made use of by the CMC in the bad treatment ‘myth’ claim. Responsibility for this second shortcoming may be shared by the Steering Committee and the research study. This second shortcoming was the assumption made by that study that the agencies of government are well-intentioned towards whistleblowers.
That may be the assumption made by that Study that the agencies of government are well-intentioned towards whistleblowers.
This assumption was carried in the face of the results of the surveys conducted by this Study that reported the wide observations of serious wrongdoing in agencies, the fears held for retribution meted out by management that discouraged most would-be whistleblowers from reporting wrongdoing, and the high percentage of reported reprisals effected by the management of organisations against their respective whistleblowers. This Study appeared to be blind to the significance of its own survey results.
Discussion in the Study report of the possibility that agencies may be ill-intentioned towards whistleblowers was short and dismissive. The situation where agencies are ill-intentioned towards whistleblowers may be an indication that the agency is affected by systemic wrongdoing, QWAG submits. An ill-intentioned agency was a credible explanation for some high average figures (and the higher figures in half of individual agencies) obtained about wrongdoing by the Study.
The friendly assumption that agencies were well intentioned towards whistleblowers, however, allowed the CMC to look for other explanations for the wrongdoing more friendly to the performance rating of the CMC.
For example, the CMC’s bad treatment myth media release recited that an average 71% of public servants had observed wrongdoing in their agency in the last two years. This figure of 71% was only an average figure, not the worst result.
This figure may approximate the percentage of people who watch the football during a match at a football stadium – for so many persons in an organisation to make such observations, the wrongdoing may likely have been open and widespread.
Again, the watchdog authorities may have failed that study by not addressing the shortcoming in the assumptions made by that study. The combined watchdog authorities had had the experience of major inquiries and Royal Commissions held into drugs, police corruption, paedophilia and child abuse, abuse of persons in health care and juvenile detention centres, abuses in military justice, malpractices in banking, corruption payments to overseas trade officials, the destruction of documents sought for litigation, and the non-enforcement of environmental conditions on mining releases.
The combined watchdog authorities had had the experience of the difficulties and the failures by the watchdog authorities, allegedly, to affect corruption, as may have been indicated by repeated inquiries on the one area of government or government regulation.
The principal example in the Federal sphere is Defence, which had 21 inquiries in 21 years into abuses of military justice.
The principal example in Queensland is child abuse and paedophilia, with the Heiner, Kimmins, Forde, Carmody and Mason inquiries (two 2016 inquiries into the deaths of two children named Mason), and the continuing Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
One may have reasonably and logically expected that, with such an accumulation of experience with dealing with corruption on the Steering Committee, the Study may have been more open to the possibility that systemic corruption could also be a cause of such large average figures, and of larger figures for particular agencies and for parts of those individual agencies.
The summary for government from this bad treatment ‘myth’ claim by a government watchdog may be that government in Australia may be looking at the level of corruption within its ranks through rose-coloured glasses. Governments and their watchdogs may be dismissing as a myth the bad treatment of whistleblowers whose disclosures, viewed without wearing rose-coloured glasses, may be showing the true colour of the government’s agencies.
QWAG submits that the bad treatment ‘myth’ claim by the CMC may be more than ‘preposterous’, it may be an alleged fraud upon the public. It may be a trick played upon the public where honesty may have required an acknowledgement by the CMC of something that was stated clearly by the WWTW Study report, namely, that whistleblowers who had left the organisation had not been included in the survey.
QWAG’s summary is that current governments may not be disposed to dealing with the corruption within their agencies. An average 71% of staff have seen wrongdoing. Governments and their watchdog authorities may be perceived to be engaged more often in cover-up of alleged systemic corruption rather than reform, and that the first victim of any cover-up will likely be the whistleblower. A close second may be the public interest in the truth.
Alleged reprisals against whistleblowers, and alleged suppression of independent advices from public servants that were in the public interest, may thus be a symptom of bad government in respect of both its political and bureaucratic components.
Governments may now, allegedly, be too corrupted by their defence of their power, and by their reliance on their mode of exercising power in the 21st century. Governments may also be too disenabled by the levels and spread of alleged corruption within their political and bureaucratic organisations.
In short, through self-interest and abuse of power, they may have painted themselves into a corner of denial.
An average 71% of public servants have seen wrongdoing. As a result, government leaders may now be more disposed to covering up that alleged corruption because it may be all beyond the capacity of the government to any longer control.