Serious Wrongdoing
Information on alleged serious wrongdoing automatically comes to QWAG with the information provided about whistleblowing disclosures and the treatment received by whistleblowers and their supporters, including their lawyers.
The expansion of efforts by authorities to suppress disclosures has been alleged. Allegations have been received on the development of alleged tactics to dissuade persons from making disclosures and to dissuade persons from supporting whistleblowers.
The effectiveness of these alleged expansions and developments in controlling whistleblowing disclosures, and in effecting the removal of whistleblowers, may have been increasingly felt by whistleblowers and their supporters.
Where the authorities appear to be losing control, however, is with the spread, expansion and development of serious wrongdoing.
Too many persons exercising authority have allegedly been involved in the alleged suppressions of disclosures and terminations of whistleblowers – former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, for example, publicly asserted that the problem with the infamous Heiner Affair in Queensland is that half of the authorities in Queensland are now implicated in the matter.
You know that I think that the Heiner Affair stinks. The problem is that half the Queensland establishment is implicated. [19 Feb 2010]
The destruction and/or disposal and/or manufacture of evidence, in cases taken by persons against the Queensland Government, may allegedly now be routine amongst most authorities in government.
This may now be the case whether or not the matter is of a whistleblowing nature or of a non-whistleblowing nature, Agencies and watchdog authorities may have been disenabled from preventing this form of serious wrongdoing, because those agencies and watchdog authorities may have themselves been involved in such activities regarding the Heiner and the “Rainbow” whistleblower cases.
The ostracising of whistleblowers in their employment may be another example. Such ostracisations may be allegedly so widespread and so developed as a practice that ostracisation can now be applied to anyone, be they a whistleblower or not a whistleblower.
A process of ostracisation may have even been imposed upon a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland, according to the Queensland media, who called for a Royal Commission into the behaviour of the Supreme Court and of the wider legal profession (eg, Courier Mail, 26 May 2015). QWAG supported that call.
The particular Chief Justice, when acting as a Commissioner of an Inquiry into Child Abuse, made a finding that the destruction on 5 March 1990 by the Goss Cabinet of the Heiner documents may have been a breach of section 129 of the Criminal Code 1899 (Qld).
Published comment in the media has made much of the role that this decision by the Commissioner may have figured in his rise to Chief Justice and in his fall. Members of the judiciary and legal profession have claimed that the opposition to the Chief Justice was based on his suitability for the position and was undertaken for the good of the justice system.
One judge, who had allegedly recommended her husband for the role, confirmed the fact of a campaign against the Chief Justice, but held it to be a stand for judicial independence.
As a further example of developments assisting the spread of serious wrongdoing, the termination of whistleblowers disclosing corruption may now be facilitated, allegedly, by the whistleblower legislation.
The revised legislation now allows the use of an undefined ‘reasonable management action’ to terminate whistleblowers. An instrument purportedly for the protection of whistleblowers may thus have been transformed by government into a pathway for the legal reprisal of whistleblowers.
It may be that the effectiveness of such practices for combating whistleblowing, rather than protecting whistleblowers, may be facilitating the spread of uncontrolled corruption, it is proposed.
This proposition can be more strongly advanced to authorities and to the community, it is understood, with the support of further examples of suspected cases.
QWAG has thus a strategic interest in gathering those examples on selected types of allegations of corruption.
Parliamentary inquiries and reviews, by comparison, are disarming themselves by dissuading whistleblowers from submitting their cases to those inquiries and reviews. It is the cases that demonstrate the problem, the causes, and the retreat of law and justice from this battlefield.