Academia & Research
There is a natural interest, positively held in academia, for analysing problems such as the treatment of whistleblowers and their disclosures.
Academic studies can be breakthroughs in the appreciation of the whistleblower circumstance, and in fact, QWAG arose out of the whistleblowers who participated in the University of Queensland 1992-94 whistleblower research project by Dr Bill de Maria, Cyrelle Jan, Tony Keyes and Tracie Pell-Story.
The alleged problems with bullying, discrimination and rough justice in the Australian Defence Force is perceived to be being strongly defended by the hierarchy … twenty-one inquiries in twenty-one years, and the Defence procedures appear to be worsening … yet an academic study at the Australian National University sponsored by a personnel branch within Defence may have escaped any controls, and produced figures and illustrations that supported concerns about the treatment of one allegedly disadvantaged group – reservists.
The most infamous whistleblower case in Queensland, the Heiner Affair, has benefitted greatly with respect to credibility because of the standing that the destruction of documents by the Goss Cabinet has in Queensland, National and International academic publications … the Heiner Affair is rated as one of the thirteen worst cases of destruction of public records in the world, during the last century …other cases in the thirteen include the instances from apartheid in South Africa and from Nazi Germany. The study of the destruction of the Heiner documents is included on the syllabus for grade 11 students in Queensland.
Whistleblowing needs more whistleblowers, once they have recovered, to undertake doctorate level research into whistleblowing.
The academic area has not always favoured sound inquiry into whistleblowing, however. The “Whistle While They Work” (WWTW) program, having a Steering Committee of watchdog regulators from around the country, chaired by Queensland’s Crime and Misconduct Commission, occupied the academic space in Australia for several years.
The purported research accepted, without inquiry or survey, that watchdog regulators were doing a satisfactory job in the handling of whistleblowing, and assumed that agencies were well-intentioned in their treatment of whistleblowers within their own agency.
The purported research then described cases that were amongst the worst whistleblower cases in Australia as ‘mythic tales’, and the Chair watchdog authority on the Steering Committee for the research claimed that bad treatment of whistleblowers was a myth.
The bad treatment ‘Myth’ criticism relied on survey results from the research Study derived by asking existing members of an agency whether or not they had been terminated. If they had been terminated, they would not have been present at the agency to answer the question.
In technical jargon, the WWTW did a cross-sectional survey of what was a longitudinal phenomenon, of disclosure and reprisal. Dr Pam Swepson, who made the disclosures about the suspected mismanagement of the fire ant control program, was one whistleblower who was allegedly refused the opportunity to answer the WWTW survey, because she was no longer a public officer.
The ‘Whistle While They Work’ study [WWTW], served by the watchdog regulators of Australia (e.g. Ombudsman Offices, Crime Commissions) on the WWTW Steering Committee, assumed that the watchdog authorities were doing a good job, and that relevant agencies were well intentioned with respect to the treatment of whistleblowers.
That is, there was no systemic wrongdoing, and valid dissent whistleblowing was not expected. Working from such a premise, the WWTW did not test the validity of these assumptions about whistleblowing in the scope of the survey based research used by WWTW in reaching its conclusions.
The survey results, however, showed that 76% of PIDs were made against superiors, not against colleagues, and 71% of employees had seen wrongdoing in the last two years (61% had seen serious wrongdoing), not 29%. These figures are very high, and, as average figures, they are not the highest figures recorded for the worst agencies.
It is therefore obviously open to suggest that these results from the WWTW’s own surveys may indicate that the intentions of agencies and the performance of watchdog regulators should also have been studied, and not assumed, as part of that research.
The WWTW also used the nature of the business in which wrongdoing had been disclosed, rather than the nature of the wrongdoing in that business activity, in order to test for any cause and effect relationships.
One business activity for which the WWTW looked at wrongdoing was with respect to information activities within an agency. This meant that a lesser number of incidents of destruction of information requested by parties for court litigation (i.e. always a potential serious criminal offence against the administration of justice) was mixed in with and diluted by the greater number of incidents of misrepresentations in agency advertising and media releases (minor maladministration).
Information then on the relationships between whistleblowing outcomes and the seriousness of the wrongdoing disclosed by the whistleblower could not be gained from such mixtures of the survey data.
The WWTW study has been soundly criticised by whistleblowers around Australia. Only one of the agencies that contributed to the survey is known, namely, the Australian Defence Force.
The assumption that the Australian Defence Force is well-intentioned towards its whistleblowers may be hard to accept, given the 21 inquiries into military justice that were conducted by Australian authorities in 21 years.
QWAG needs an authority to organise and fund the continuation of the Research approach undertaken by the University of Queensland – a Whistleblowers Protection Body or NIC might achieve this:
Unshielding the Shadow Culture, Dr William de Maria and Cyrelle Jan. Queensland Whistleblower Study Result Release One, University of Queensland, Brisbane, April 1994.
Wounded Workers, Dr William de Maria and Cyrelle Jan, Queensland Whistleblower Study Result Release Two, University of Queensland, Brisbane, October 1994.
Additionally, QWAG recommends that the following data needs to be accumulated, which need is beyond the capabilities of QWAG – a Whistleblowers Protection Body or NIC might also achieve this:
- A Good Story or Outcome or other Event offering more Hope to whistleblowers.
- Destruction of Evidence – incidents where documents or other materials sought from government or an agency is suspected of having been destroyed or disposed of or lost without a reasonable explanation.
- Tricks used by Watchdog Regulators – incidents in the Queensland or Federal jurisdiction where watchdog regulators, such as a crime commission or ombudsman office or public service commission or information commission or legal services commission or archives office or other watchdog regulator, may have failed in their duty and is suspected of tricking or deceiving the whistleblower, resulting in the denial of an investigation or denial of relief from adverse treatment.
- Oppressive Tactics in Litigation – the failures of the government and agencies to act as a Model Litigant in proceedings defending claims by whistleblowers, is a behaviour by government legal officers that QWAG seeks to record and map. This information may be used in submissions made in support of disclosures by whistleblowers from these government legal offices, of the unfair practices being used to win litigation by means other than on the merits of the opposing arguments.
- Loss of Capability – instances of operational failures or project failures or other mistakes or waste generated or caused by the suspected wrongdoing that has been the subject of disclosures by the whistleblower, or caused by the removal of the whistleblower from particular responsibilities. This information will be provided in submissions advancing the benefits of effective whistleblower disclosure and protection schemes.
QWAG seeks to provide feedback, to academic institutions and to government agencies and the community, regarding QWAG’s concerns about particular aspects of the Whistle While They Work reports steered by the Watchdog Regulators of Australia. QWAG seeks to distil the information from that project that is useful, but also offer a considered position where the results of the WWTW may be flawed and detrimental to the safety of whistleblowers in the real world. Examples of these efforts include:
- Email exchanges between Dr Pam Swepson and Dr A Brown
Re the alleged exclusion by WWTW of terminated whistleblowers from surveys used in researching whistleblowing including the termination of whistleblowers, International Whistleblower Research networks, 2015
- Email exchanges between Professor P Mazerolle and G McMahon
Re the claim by the CMC that the bad treatment of whistleblowers is a myth, International Whistleblower Research networks, June 2015
Parliamentary Committees too are now suffering the disadvantages of the poor constructions incorporated into the WWTW, where Parliaments have no research data on the performance of Sword agencies, just their self-serving assertions, incorporated into academic research that simply missed the story that would have been available to us all with better structures and an interest in all relevant aspects.