About the event

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The Treasury Laws Amendment (Enhancing Whistleblower Protections) Bill 2017 is set to consolidate and enhance Australia’s statutory whistleblower regime. Among a range of features aimed at improving the ability and willingness of whistleblowers to make disclosures, the reforms will seek to improve protections for whistleblowers in the corporate and financial sectors, which have existed in a more limited form since 2004, and to provide protections for tax whistleblowers, which have not previously existed in statute. Key changes to facilitate these goals include:

• repealing provisions across several acts that previously dealt inconsistently with corporate and financial sector whistleblowers, and consolidating the various regimes into the Corporations Act;
• enhancing the penalties for contraventions of whistleblower protections;
• allowing protections for anonymous disclosures; and
• providing for an ‘emergency disclosure’ to a member of Parliament or a journalist in specified circumstances.

The reforms will offer challenges to corporations, including providing increased impetus to the establishment of internal whistleblower policies.

Level: Intermediate