CITATION: Barry O’Keefe

The award has been given for the leadership he has shown to watchdog authorities by his statements of concern about the Heiner Affair.

Barry O’Keefe expressed his concern at a Conference on Corruption before watchdog authorities from Australia and from overseas, held in Brisbane in August. He is the first whistleblower to come from the community of watchdogs and make disclosures about matters that are the concern of other watchdog authorities.

When his statements were not reported in the Queensland Media, Barry O’Keefe made a further visit to Queensland to repeat his concerns on commercial radio.

These actions speak to the community of watchdogs, the legal profession and to the community at large that authorities should not turn away from alleged wrongdoing.

His is a statement that turning away is not an appropriate response to actions that undermine the legitimacy of the professions involved and of the total justice system.

The disclosures by two Awardees, in combination, (the other was Justice Tony Fitzgerald) demonstrate that the largely ‘blind eye’ that may have been shown by the establishment in Queensland, its police force, its judiciary, and its legal profession, to the allegations of crimes and misconduct in government, has not yielded any dividend.

Barry O’Keefe has brought to our attention the primary example of the alleged ‘blind-eye’, and is expressing concern as an Australian. Tony Fitzgerald’s statements are describing the absence of any dividend for this and other alleged avoidances by authorities of their duty.

If any ‘blind-eye’ was turned, in order to give a self-claiming reformist movement the opportunity to bring the Fitzgerald reforms into effect, that promise has not been fulfilled.

Ignoring the allegations of the rorts of parliamentary expenses, the hundreds of public servants assigned to gulags, the common destruction of documents wanted for legal proceedings, the failures of police to act on abuse of children and the elderly in care, the loss of capability by a politicized public service, the capture of watchdog authorities, the terminations of whistleblowers, and the politicization of journalism and of academic research, all may have been for naught.