Part: A
Whistleblowers Protection Laws in Australia
In Australia, there are several states and territories have some form of whistleblower protection legislation. These include the South Australian Whistleblowers Protection Act 1993, the Queensland Whistleblower Protection Act 1994, the ACT Public Interest Disclosure Act 1994, and the NSW Protected Disclosures Act 1994. Furthermore that Western Australia has the more limited Official Corruption Commission Act 1988.
The Queensland Whistleblower Protection Act ‘endows withuniquefortification [in the public interest] to disclosures about unlawful, negligent or improper public sector conduct’. The NSW Protected Disclosures Act is intended to ‘provide protection for public officials disclosing corrupt
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In Australia, some legislation Acts are also there likes Lloyd-La Follette (1912), Sarbanes-Oxley (2002), and Dodd-Frank (2010).
But in Australia, there have not been so much protection acts for Private companies’ whistleblowers like public sectors .
The UK is fortunate to have The Public Interest Disclosure Act, a single, comprehensive Whistleblower protection law that provides protection to both public and private sector whistleblowers). It was introduced in 1998 and amended in 2013. This Act has its origins in the numerous financial scandals that may have been avoided if employees had been provided an opportunity to report wrong-doing.
There is a definite link between the number of whistle blowing reports and the existence of comprehensive and effective whistleblower protections laws in a country Even without a comprehensive national piece of whistleblower legislation in place, a growing number of Australian companies have implemented internal (or corporate) whistleblower programs for their employees intended to offer protection against retaliation and/or prosecution. The proviso, however, is that the complaint is made in “good faith”. It is worth noting there does not appear to be any correlation between protection legislation and an increase in frivolous
...nduct, for instance, take in strong consideration any information or complaints received from the public or any other source that goes against the officers’ integrity. (“Recommendations for Corruption Prevention.” ICAC.NSW.GOV)
Throughout the world, in history and in present day, injustice has affected all of us. Whether it is racial, sexist, discriminatory, being left disadvantaged or worse, injustice surrounds us. Australia is a country that has been plagued by injustice since the day our British ancestors first set foot on Australian soil and claimed the land as theirs. We’ve killed off many of the Indigenous Aboriginal people, and also took Aboriginal children away from their families; this is known as the stolen generation. On the day Australia became a federation in 1901, the first Prime Minister of Australia, Edmund Barton, created the White Australia Policy. This only let people of white skin colour migrate to the country. Even though Australia was the first country to let women vote, women didn’t stand in Parliament until 1943 as many of us didn’t support female candidates, this was 40 years after they passed the law in Australian Parliament for women to stand in elections. After the events of World War Two, we have made an effort to make a stop to these issues here in Australia.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was drafted to encourage and protect whistleblowers from retaliation after the fraud scandal that cause the collapse of Enron in 2001. In a 2010 Senate Report found that “external auditors detected only 4.1 percent of uncovered fraud schemes, “whistleblower tips detected 54.1% of uncovered fraud schemes in public companies” and were thirteen times more effective than external audits” (Turpan, 2016). Whistleblowers serve an important service to the public and are more effective than external audits. The CFAA has been used to by employers to retaliate against employees who act as informants for agencies like Internal Revenue Service or Security Exchange Commission to expose fraud. There employees, not to their financial gain, gather information as evidence of fraud by the company. With a broad interpretation of CFAA, the employee would "exceed their authority" and was "unauthorized" to access the information, therefore allowing the company to hide their illegal
Although Hollate introduced a compliance program and code of conduct when it went public, the programs were put on “the back burner”. This outcome is not surprised for that the company does not pay attention to the programs. It is, therefore, important to “reinforce the values” and “employee a boundary system when actions are inconsistent with the code of conduct” for the purpose of early detection. Tyco provides a good example after its scandal, by initiating “mandatory annual compliance training for all its employees worldwide” and creating the Tyco Guide to Ethical Conduct to familiarize employees with company expectations and help them make ethical decisions. As tips is the most useful method for internal and external sources to detect frauds, the whistleblower hotline should be well communicated with encouragement on reporting any suspicious activity. In addition, to improve the effectiveness of the compliance program and code of conducts, Hollate should implement management monitoring and evaluation on a regular
...y. Congress has passed laws to protect whistleblowers because they protect the accountability of the government and private companies by sharing the truth of their actions. Although there have been laws to protect whistle blowers many still are receiving punishment from corporations today.
Corruption is a persistent problem that plagues the world and it knows no boundaries. Transparency International defines it as the “abuse of entrusted power for private gain” (2013). For the purposes of this thread, ‘corruption’ is defined as any individual, collective, or structural act or process that permits the use of public authority or position for private gain. This definition captures the broad and many ways individuals and institutions abuse power and the public trust. In regard to whistleblowing, much conflict stems from the context in which the whistleblower is viewed.
For instance, Wesfarmers’ board has set up a separate whistleblower policy to promote reporting of suspected unethical, illegal either with management or Protected Disclosure Officer. Thus, the role of the Target board not only dissemination of parent’s policy to all employees, but importantly to prompt report with adequate and precise information to Wesfarmers. Target board should keep in mind of acting in the best interest of stakeholders of all group instead of its own entity. Notwithstanding those roles, Wesfarmers was aware of Target’s accounting treatment 2015 on March 2016. The accounting arrangements was the case indicated the lack of information reporting or the weakness of information system from Target board to the parent company. When the question about the certainly attention of Target board to the accounting scandal was still open, it could not be concluded that there was a breakdown in its obligation in providing adequate information to the parent company. The responsibility of Target board was not fulfilled with the due care and objective their delegated
Criminal acts of Australia are generally administered by individual jurisdictions in the Commonwealth of Australia. These jurisdictions include the six states, the Commonwealth government, and the self-governing territories. It is in large part a matter for the states, with only a small subset of criminal activities reserved for Commonwealth government to prosecute.
Whistleblowing is the deed, usually done by an employee of a company, of drawing concern or creating awareness of unethical or illegal behaviour within the corporation to a higher authority or to the public. Whistleblowing can take place internally or externally. Internal whistleblowing is when an employee bypasses an immediate supervisor and reports the issue to a superior level of administration. This type of whistleblowing is kept within the firm whereas external whistleblowing occurs when an employee exposes the wrongdoings of a company to external sources such as the press or law enforcements. There is also a distinction between acknowledged and anonymous whistleblowing. Anonymous whistle-blowing occurs when the whistleblower keeps their identity concealed to protect themselves and their relatives from the consequences put on by the company while acknowledged whistleblowers are willing to withstand the accusations of disloyalty along with the consequences brought on by the company by putting their name behind their deed of whistleblowing.
The Company will not retaliate against a whistleblower. This includes, but is not limited to, protection from retaliation in the form of an adverse employment action such as termination, compensation decreases, or poor work assignments and threats of physical
The answer is quite complex, because some would argue that it is a lengthy process just to get to the bottom of these allegations since both parties could and would probably sue each other, it’s expensive as well. As mentioned above, the whistleblower in question can have his reputation ruined if these allegations turned out to be false or even worse he may cause publicity and this can result in the layoff of workers in the company as well as him not having a job in the future so at the end, it will all be a mess with both sides losing. This may sound like an argument that is deemed intimating but people are still willing to try and success into making a better environment for future employees and even with laws and procedures in place, whistleblowers, especially in the US are being treated poorly because who would want to be “disloyal” and “irresponsible” at a company especially multinational ones and this causes a confusion for upcoming whistleblowers to decide whether it’s worth it or not. (Ettorre) In terms of Kantian theorists, they suggest that people would act in harmony with all the universally accepted rules such as telling the truth which is
A whistleblower as I have recently learned is a person who exposes any kind of evidence, whether it is information or activities, that appears to be either illegal, unethical, or not permitted within an organization that is either private or public. The information of suspected wrongdoing can be classified in many ways: violation of company policy/rules, law, regulation, or threat to public interest/national security, as well as fraud, and corruption (Merriam-Webster's collegiate dictionary, 2016). A whistleblower can choose to bring information or allegations to surface either internally or externally. Internally, a whistleblower can bring one’s accusations to the attention of other people within the
For the general public, the benefits of ethical rules far outweigh their costs. Both the drafting and administration of codes of ethics require a balancing of political, administrative and legal considerations. A central and pervasive concern should be to balance the desire for high ethical standards with the preservation of the individual rights of public servants. A major principle guiding the administration of a code in one Canadian government is that public servants 'should enjoy the same rights in their private dealings as any other citizen unless it can be demonstrated that a restriction is essential to the public interest. ' Similarly, the Australian draft code states that 'where personal behavior does not interfere with the proper performance of official duties, and where it does not reflect on the integrity or standing of the Service, it is of no interest or concern to the employing authority. '" Although some governments have paid little attention to the impact of codes of ethics on their employees ' rights, most governments have been sensitive to this problem. But the fact remains that a well-drafted and well-administered code does tend to diminish the rights of public servants compared to the rights enjoyed by their fellow citizens outside government. Perhaps the single greatest advantage of a code of
Whistleblowing and Sarbanes-Oxley Introduction When a whistleblower hears that a person in the organization is deceitful, being fraudulent, take things that does not belong to them or is untruthful, he is astounded that this behavior goes on in the workplace. The seriousness of the offensive and being certain that the offensive happened are determining factors of whether to take a chance at blowing the whistle. The situational characteristics rather than personal ones, (Meredith, 2014). Key characteristics of a Whistleblower
Whistle blowing is an attempt of an employee or former employee of a company to reveal what he or she believes to be a wrongdoing in or by a company or organization. Whistle blowing tries to make others aware of practices that are considered illegal or immoral. If the wrongdoing is reported to someone in the company it is said to be internal. Internal whistle blowing tends to do less damage to the company. There is also external whistle blowing. This is where the wrongdoing is reported to the media and brought to the attention of the public. This type of whistle blowing tends to affect the company in a negative way because of bad publicity. It is said that whistle blowing is personal if the wrongdoing affects the whistle blower alone (like sexual harassment), and said to be impersonal if the wrongdoing affects other people. Many people whistle blow for two main reasons: morality and revenge.