Media Releases

From 1 January 2020, the Protected Disclosure Act 2012 is replaced by the Public Interest Disclosures Act 2012. See Public interest disclosures for more information.

The last two decades have seen a revolution in understanding of how important public interest whistleblowing is, to the good governance of organisations and to public integrity.

The attention placed on this issue by IBAC and the Victorian Ombudsman, over many years now, is testimony to those changes.

As a result, leading organisations are now reaping the rewards of efforts to encourage their staff to disclose suspected wrongdoing, either to themselves or independent agencies, so they can deal with issues before they get out of hand.

But these positive changes highlight what we still know least about.

What makes the difference between those organisations and managers who are good at responding to this vital information, and are better at ensuring the welfare of those who come forward?  So that whistleblowers actually receive the protection they are due under the law – in reality, and not just on paper?

In 2016 and, we hope, every 2-3 years thereafter, all public agencies will get the opportunity to contribute to answering these questions, and to learn how the performance of their own whistleblowing management practices and procedures compares, through a major new research project in this field.

Building on the Whistling While They Work project 10 years ago, a new Australian Research Council Linkage Project led by Griffith University, and supported by IBAC and the Ombudsman together with 15 other partners, will be available later this year to help agencies benchmark their performance – and at the same time, contribute to new understanding of what makes the difference between good and poor practices.

Responding appropriately to disclosures, and ensuring the welfare of those who make them can involve some of the biggest challenges of judgment, skill and leadership that managers ever face.

That's why the new Guidelines for Making and Handling Protected Disclosures and – especially – for Protected Disclosure Welfare Management, being released by IBAC, drawing on the previous research, are so important.

But as the Guidelines emphasise, exactly how these goals are to be achieved in different organisations, and different circumstances, depends on a huge combination of factors.  Individual personalities, and the particular histories of different managers and organisations, are different and impact differently in each case.

Accordingly, the new research including a next-generation organisational survey called Integrity@WERQ will start to pinpoint the factors that agencies need to address to better equip themselves to respond more productively to disclosure and welfare issues, and tell them where they stand on that journey.

All Victorian public agencies can look forward to hearing more from IBAC and Griffith University in the coming months about how to get the benefits of participating in this survey – along with their counterparts in every state, federally and in New Zealand, as well as private sector entities for the first time.

We already know from experience that no two organisations are exactly the same when it comes to the issues they are dealing with, their particular efforts in managing integrity issues, and the results they are getting for those efforts.

By drawing together evidence of what’s working, and not, across a large pool of organisations… and also being able to inform organisations individually, and confidentially, how their efforts compare within that pool… we're hopeful that all those with interests in the good governance of their organisation will yield long term benefits from this research, and contribute to the strength of the integrity systems on which good services, decision-making and citizen outcomes depend.

AJ Brown
Professor of Public Policy & Law
Centre for Governance & Public Policy
Griffith University