Silencing the evidence: How Australia’s whistleblower inquiry buried the truth

A Senate Inquiry that promised whistleblower reform instead buried critical evidence, suppressed firsthand testimony and reinforced the very system that punishes those who speak out, writes Nigel Carney.

IN MID-2025, the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee tabled its long-awaited report into the Whistleblower Protection Authority Bill. On the surface, it appeared measured. In reality, it was a rude blow- off.

This was supposed to be a landmark moment, the foundation of a robust national regime for whistleblower protection. Instead, the committee delivered a softly worded disappointment. It acknowledged systemic failure without naming culprits. It gestured towards reform but shied away from prescribing it,

That outcome wasn't inevitable. In fact, it ran counter to the weight of evidence placed before the committee.

Thirty-one individuals and organisations made submissions during the 48th Parliament. Legal scholars, advocacy groups and whistleblowers themselves contributed. Some shared devastating accounts: retaliation, mental breakdown, stalled careers and professional sabotage.

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Tragically – and ironically – 16 of those submissions were never published.

Of note, none of the government, corporate and civil society submissions of the 47th Parliament experienced labelling and suppression, that the public to date is aware of.

Only 15 were made public. The remaining 16 were marked confidential, reviewed by the committee and then excluded from the public record – without explanation, summary, or acknowledgment that their content shaped the findings. Their removal speaks volumes.

Among the suppressed was Professor Peter Tregear, former head of the once-prestigious Canberra School of Music at the Australian National University (ANU) and a documented whistleblower. His submission identified three core defects in the Bill: immunity provisions that block judicial review, the absence of independent oversight and the failure to provide parliamentary scrutiny.

He described how he had made a protected disclosure under the Public Interest Disclosure Act (PID) at the ANU. The ANU's internal investigation failed. The Commonwealth Ombudsman declined to use its statutory powers to compel evidence. It admitted the ANU's response was inadequate and then closed the case anyway.

This pattern is not isolated. The Robodebt Royal Commission found that the Ombudsman failed to use its section 9 compulsion powers even when it knew government departments had supplied misleading information. That failure allowed Robodebt to continue, unchecked.

Professor Tregear's suppressed submission detailed legislative solutions modelled on the oversight structures of the National Anti-Corruption Commission: the establishment of an independent Inspector and a dedicated Joint Parliamentary Committee. Both were absent from the Bill.

Notably, Professor Tregear's criticisms of the Commonwealth Ombudsman's handling of his case had already been made public through submissions to another parliamentary committee in November 2025. Yet when he raised the same concerns in the context of the Whistleblower Protection Authority Bill, his submission was suppressed.

Also excluded was the Fusion Party's submission, which raised identical concerns about immunity and oversight.

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The decision to bury these testimonies echoes the very dysfunction the inquiry was tasked to investigate.

Public interest disclosure relies on trust — not only in legal protection, but in procedural fairness. When Parliament invites testimony from whistleblowers and then suppresses it from the record, it signals that truth is conditional. It is hard to imagine a message more damaging to those considering whether to speak up.

The committee did offer some truth: it declared the existing PID Act “unfit for purpose” – too complex, too narrow, too prone to administrative delay. But it failed to acknowledge the human cost of that dysfunction: that whistleblowers have been prosecuted, punished and publicly discredited under a law that claimed to protect them.

David McBride, now imprisoned for revealing classified evidence of war crimes, said from his cell:

“We do have whistleblower protection laws, but they are a con. They do not work. Whistleblowers like myself end up in gaol as if we were criminals.”

The committee didn't contradict that statement. Nor did it recommend any remedy for those failed by the current regime.

Instead, it deferred responsibility to the Government's legislative process. Reform, it implied, was coming — out of the committee's hands.

Then came the bait-and-switch.

The Government proposed its own watered-down Bill – the Public Interest Disclosure and Other Legislation Amendment (Whistleblower Protections) Bill 2025 – which proposed a “Whistleblower Ombudsman” housed within the existing Commonwealth Ombudsman's office — the same body that failed to act in both the Tregear and Robodebt cases.

None of the core problems were addressed. The Ombudsman retained immunity under section 33 of its Act, shielding it from civil litigation unless bad faith – a near-impossible legal standard – could be proven. No Inspector. No external oversight. The system still polices itself.

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Professor Tregear resubmitted his concerns to the Attorney-General's Department during public consultation in September. The structural flaws were the same. His submission was again excluded from the publicly published list, only becoming available months later through a Freedom of Information request.

Two Senators – David Pocock and David Shoebridge – issued dissenting reports. But their concerns did not alter the final shape of the report or the Government's subsequent legislation.

The suppression of so many firsthand accounts fundamentally alters the historical record. It reframes the debate. It buries the evidence. Of the 16 suppressed submissions, the public currently knows the content of only two – Professor Tregear's and the Fusion Party's – both of which highlighted critical flaws in the proposed oversight structure. What the other 14 submissions contained remains unknown.

What remains is a closed loop: the Ombudsman receives complaints about itself, is immune from legal challenge and cannot be independently scrutinised. When it fails, as documented in multiple cases, no remedy exists. The investigation closes. The damage repeats.

The Senate Inquiry could have disrupted that cycle. Instead, it reinforced it by suppressing the very submissions that made it visible.