Evidence to Inquiry into whistleblowing protections within the Australian Government public sector

Susan Harris Rimmer, Australia Lawyers for Human Rights

Abstract

Dr Harris Rimmer—We are strongly in support of better legislative protection for public sector whistleblowers, partly based on the experience of many of our

members who are public servants with a legal background in our 1,300-lawyer-strong organisation.

We are interested in legislative protection of a particular sort. We are interested in protection that uses some sort of balancing human rights framework, which we are happy to go into and which will be the subject of our supplementary submission. We are interested in an independent mechanism, ideally located in the Office of the Commonwealth Ombudsman so it can deal with contractors in the public service.

We are particularly interested in this issue because for the last 15 years we have been commenting on the human rights aspects of Commonwealth issues, particularly immigration, AWB, the war in Iraq, health—a range of issues. We have often seen firsthand the results of the

absence in Australia of whistleblowing protection for the public service coupled with the formal

absence of legal protection of human rights at the Commonwealth level.