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	Whistleblowing is a risky business in Australia by Charles Sturt University, University of NSW Australia   Oct 2012   Whistleblowing is a risky business in Australia, by Peter Roberts.   The latest scandal engulfing Note Printing Australia and Securency highlights critical issues of transparency, corruption and whistleblowing. The allegations of foreign bribery – some reportedly exposed by a whistleblower – involving Reserve Bank of Australia’s currency-making subsidiaries, Securency and Note Printing Australia, has now widened to questions over how much senior RBA figures knew and when.   At a House of Representatives Economics Committee last week, RBA governor Glenn Stevens denied a cover-up of allegations and said a lot of work had been done to improve governance at both subsidiaries.   Still, the allegations join other high-profile examples of questionable behaviour involving Commonwealth entities that goes back to 1998 and the Australian Wheat Board oil-for-food scandal, where the AWB made allegedly corrupt payments to the Saddam Hussein regime.   In 2001, Vivian Alvarez Solon, a Filipino-born Australian citizen, was wrongfully deported by the Department of Immigration, eventually returning to Australia in 2005. Meanwhile, throughout 2004 and 2005 Cornelia Rau, also an Australian citizen, was wrongfully kept in a detention centre.   In 2007, customs official Allan Kessing was convicted of breaching Commonwealth confidentiality provisions for revealing faults in airports security in 2005.   And in 2010, the home insulation installation scheme was abandoned after fires and deaths of workers. A whistleblower came forward to allege that the Department had been forewarned of the risks.   Earlier this month nurses employed by the Federal Government alleged corruption in the funding of aged care places.   All of these instances indicate serious breakdowns in governance arrangements in either Commonwealth operated or funded entities. In many of the cases cited, a whistleblower exposed the scandal; while for circumstances surrounding the AWB scandal and Ms Rau and Solon, the question arises why nobody witnessing the wrongdoing came forward and reported it.   Whistleblowing is a risky business. Some Australian researchers have documented the consequences to their actions, such as retaliation, mainly from their managers and supervisors.   That research indicates that there is a dimension of whistleblowing beyond the heroic stories that appear in the media. While some cases of whistleblowing are adequately handled, at least a quarter of people to come forward to with reports of wrongdoing suffer retaliation. This research was conducted in a number of Australian jurisdictions including the Commonwealth.   One mechanism for dealing with whistleblowing is legislation to encourage and protect these individuals. That is only one element of the necessary infrastructure – supervision and oversight from a powerful and well resourced integrity agency, such as an anti-corruption body is also critical.   Comprehensive policies and procedures within each organisation are also needed – as well as a radical turnaround of the cultural belief to view whistleblowing not as some exceptional activity, but as a normal part of ethical administration and business.   Current national efforts to strengthen whistleblowing legislation are a work in progress and there is still a lot of room for improvement, particularly in providing protection from retaliation for whistleblowers and compensation for those who have suffered.   Without effective protection, compensation and the commitment to respect whistleblowers, these laws risk being a dangerous facade, tempting employees to come forward with reports, then leaving them exposed to damaging retaliation.   Whistleblowing research, indicates that by a considerable margin, Australia has the least comprehensive protection for whistleblowers.   The 2009 Parliamentary Committee report into whistleblowing recommended sweeping changes to Commonwealth whistleblowing protection.   While ever the Australian Governmenmt continues to dither on the issue of providing protection for whistleblowers, we as a community are reliant upon the bravery and integrity of individual public servants to come forward with reports of wrongdoing.   Ephemeral recognition as a hero may be gratifying for those individuals, but it disguises the army of decent public servants who report wrongdoing while risking significant retaliation, sometimes involving them in the loss of their career and often irreversible adverse impacts on their personal health.   * Peter Roberts is a Senior Lecturer, at the Australian Graduate School of Policing, Charles Sturt University. (Edited Extract)   Sep 2010   Bribery and Corruption. (Australian School of Business, University of NSW)   Bribery scandals have engulfed a number of Australian companies operating overseas. The incidents raise questions about shortfalls in management supervision of staff, who act corruptly for the "good" of their employer. Some of Australia"s largest companies, such as mining giant Rio Tinto, have been involved in widely reported examples. In 2005, the unruly behaviour of grain marketing organisation, AWB Limited, formerly the Australian Wheat Board, also hit the headlines. And recently bribes were reported to have been paid by Securency International, the polymer banknote company half owned by the central bank, the Reserve Bank of Australia.   Transparency International, the global anti-corruption coalition, has released several progress reports on the enforcement of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development"s Anti-Bribery Convention. Transparency"s 2009 report pointed to Australia"s weak record of enforcing the agreement. In fact, Australia had not prosecuted anyone. Generally enforcement was extremely uneven among the 36 out of 38 signatories to the convention the report covered. "There is active enforcement in only four countries (Germany, Norway, Switzerland and the United States) and little or no enforcement in 21 of the parties," said the report. "Increased efforts are also needed in countries with moderate enforcement because their level of enforcement is not high enough to provide effective deterrence."   Australian Federal Police are now investigating a whistleblower"s allegations that Securency International, the Reserve Bank subsidiary that invented and markets polymer banknotes, offered A$50 million in bribes and procured prostitutes to win contracts all around the world.   In the AWB case, the grains marketer has now admitted the A$290 million in fees it paid to a Jordanian transport company were loaded with payments that were passed onto Saddam Hussein"s regime in Iraq. This contradicted its earlier responses to the Australian Securities Exchange and to Paul Volcker, who investigated corruption in the Oil-for-Food Programme for the United Nations (UN) in 2005. Terence Cole, who headed the 2006 Australian inquiry investigating allegations that AWB paid bribes to the Iraqi regime to secure wheat sales, was told: "AWB has consistently maintained its position that it did not know, and could not know, what Alia [the Jordanian company] did with the money AWB paid to it by way of transport fees."   Official responses to the AWB scandal have been muted. Although AWB was violating United Nations (UN) sanctions by inflating transport costs to effectively funnel money to Saddam Hussein"s regime, the Australian Taxation Office ruled that the A$290 million that AWB paid was not illegal under Iraqi law. Consequently, they were not bribes under Australian law, and the Tax Office determined AWB was well within its rights to claim the costs as a tax deduction. The Australian Federal Police last year dropped its investigation, saying it was not clear that breaching a UN sanction is a criminal offence and a conviction "was not in the public interest". Now, the grain exporter is defending a A$100 million shareholder class action by claiming Australian and United Nations officials knew of the payments – and they did not breach the UN Oil-for-Food Programme anyway.   A Case of Complacency?   There"s an argument that the Australian government has a conflict of interest as bribery for contracts leads to profit for government coffers through more exports and tax revenue, according to David Chaikin, a Sydney-based barrister and academic. "Singapore and Hong Kong prosecute private sector bribery, but Australia does not, even though it has been criminal here for 100 years," Chaikin says. "The Securency and AWB cases appear to have the tacit support of the Australian government. Working for the government shields employees to some degree."   Australians can be prosecuted at home for two offences offshore – child sex tourism and bribing foreign officials. The apparent reluctance to prosecute offshore bribery points to a deep-seated complacency in Australian law enforcement about these issues, says Ross Buckley, a law professor at the University of New South Wales. "This is probably due to the political power of the big companies," he suggests. Buckley believes the government needs to provide guidance to Australian companies by reforming unwieldy provisions and publicly setting a maximum monetary amount for "facilitation payments" for each country overseas. In 2006, only 51 of Australia"s top 100 companies had explicit policies prohibiting their employees from giving and receiving bribes, compared with 92% of such companies in the UK and 80% in the US.   However, Australian companies need to be careful of corruption offshore. They are at risk being made into "splash examples" by foreign governments, as cases in Indonesia and China have shown recently. "It amazes me that company executives say it is the only way to get business – and almost everyone does it," says Buckley.   Discounting the Cost of Corruption   The rationalisation of corruption – how staff convince themselves that corrupt behaviour is acceptable – is the research field of Elizabeth Maitland, a lecturer at the Australian School of Business. Economic models of corruption are based on the assumption that individuals make rational decisions to engage in corrupt practices and balance the costs of exposure against the potential gains from abusing the authority of their office. It"s assumed the perpetrators are conscious they are deciding to commit illegal acts. Yet Maitland"s research suggests a very different process occurs, in which corruption is rationalised as normal behaviour, not criminal activity, and the "costs" of corruption are not decisive considerations.
	ICRC calls on states to join convention against enforced disappearance by ICRC & agencies   Aug 2010   More States should urgently become party to the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance, a key instrument to prevent and eradicate disappearances, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said today. In the run-up to the International Day of the Disappeared on 30 August, the ICRC expressed regret that the convention has still not entered into force as it has not yet been ratified by 20 States. To date, 83 States have signed the convention and 19 have become party to it.   "This convention sends a message of hope to the families of the disappeared," said Olivier Dubois, deputy head of the Central Tracing Agency and Protection Division of the ICRC. "Causing people to disappear by means of secret imprisonment, abduction or extrajudicial killing can never be justified. The families of the disappeared experience extreme pain and anxiety, which can last for years – sometimes a lifetime – and make it difficult for them to lead normal lives. It is imperative that as many States as possible sign and become party to the convention."   Enforced disappearance is a crime under international human rights law and – when it occurs in war – under international humanitarian law. The convention contains a series of measures to prevent forced disappearances, including the requirement that any person deprived of liberty must be registered by the detaining authority. It also establishes the right of any victim to know the truth about the circumstances of an enforced disappearance and the fate of the disappeared person. States that sign and ratify the treaty have to make enforced disappearance an offence under their national criminal law.   In every situation of armed conflict or internal violence, people disappear. The tragedy affects millions of people all over the world. The ICRC works to prevent people from going missing, to help clarify what happened to those who do disappear and to support the families of missing persons.   The ICRC seeks to ensure that the needs of the families of missing people – including their legal, financial, social and psychological needs – are met. It accepts tracing requests and attempts to locate missing people, an endeavour that can involve visits to places of detention, hospitals or morgues, or appeals to the authorities to investigate. Tracing can be a complex and lengthy process involving the participation not only of the ICRC but also of National Red Cross or Red Crescent Societies in several countries. Visit the related web page
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