At home
It is not just overseas where these incidents are occurring, with them arising on home soil too.
In early February, Qantas stood down an aircraft cleaner and union representative who raised concerns over cleaning standards in aircraft – a matter that is now being investigated by WorkSafe NSW.
This is after WorkSafe issued formal breach notices to Qantas a month later for failing to provide cleaners with a safe system of work, forcing them to handle wet tissues, used face masks and dirty nappies without proper protection.
Adelaide Airport has also since been brought to a near standstill by a COVID-19 outbreak among Qantas baggage handlers.
Just last weekend, a Sydney doctor working on the COVID-19 response was forced to sound the alarm that vulnerable patients in forced hotel isolations are not getting the care they need.
Given the huge potential human cost of these decisions, we can only watch carefully and hope for a speedy and positive response.
All these events are consistent with Australian and international research, showing employees and officials are the single most important and fastest way wrongdoing or mistakes are brought to light in organisations.
The current crisis not only highlights whistleblowers’ importance, but that protections for whistleblowers should be remembered, and where necessary, brought to bear.
While protections for private sector workers were strengthened under federal legislation in Australia, in 2019, we must remember that job remains unfinished, while public sector whistleblower protections are also lagging far behind.
It what already seems a distant memory, last year’s Australian Federal Police raids on media outlets for reporting whistleblower stories showed how out of date our federal public sector whistleblower protections have become.
Yet criminal prosecutions of defence and intelligence officials like David McBride and Witness K, and his lawyer Bernard Collary, have been continuing thanks to these clunky and unhelpful laws.
This is despite the whistleblowers and media being right – as shown when the Army finally initiated a criminal investigation into the shooting of an unarmed Afghani civilian, captured in helmet footage aired by Four Corners just last month.
Reforming Australia’s laws and protections is on the cards for the current federal government and parliament – but like many needed reforms, this process is now on hold, notwithstanding its obvious importance in the present crisis.
Indeed, whistleblowers are only likely to become even more vital to stopping wrongdoing, bungling and outright rorting of the billions of taxpayers’ dollars to be urgently rolled out as part of the economic response.
Amid the many calls for accountability to return to government decision-making at this time, we must remember it is the frontline people who speak up and speak out, who are our best assets for transparency, and most in need of our support and protection.