PJC inquiry urges PM to take urgent action on whistleblower protection issues

The Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services, chaired by Senator Deborah O’Neill, has called upon Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to enact an “urgent enhancement of whistleblower protections in Australia”.

The committee has called upon the government to apply recommendations from its 2017 Whistleblower Protections report, as well as recommendations in its 2024 Ethics and Professional Accountability: Structural Challenges in the Audit, Assurance and Consultancy Industry report.

Since its release, the committee noted that the government has agreed to 16 of the 35 recommendations in its 2017 report, noted 11, and did not agree to eight.

The committee added that the recent allegations made by a KPMG whistleblower “continue to expose significant systemic and structural flaws”, which were revealed in the 2024 and 2017 inquiries into whistleblower protections.

“The issues that have come to light during the committee’s inquiry into these matters are not new—they are long-standing, well-known, and have been well-ventilated over many years—and vividly demonstrate that Australia’s whistleblower regimes need urgent repair.”

“The committee considers that there is an overwhelming case for the government to act with haste, and as soon as practicable, to address the deficiencies in Australia’s whistleblower regimes.”

“The committee considers that there is an urgent need to ensure that interim measures for the wellbeing and support of whistleblowers are put in place until the harmonisation of whistleblower laws and the establishment of a Whistleblower Protection Authority are achieved.”

One of the committee’s 2017 recommendations made to the government was to establish a whistleblower protection authority to be “prescribed as an investigative agency with power to investigate criminal reprisals and make recommendations to the Australian Federal Police or a prosecutorial body and non-criminal reprisals against whistleblowers”.

The Whistleblower Protection Authority Bill 2025 was recommended against by the Senate on 29 August, on the grounds of regulatory duplication, with Labor and Coalition senators raising concerns of conflicts of interest and a lack of protections for whistleblowers from liability.

This followed the South Australia District Court’s decision to impose a 12-month good behaviour bond on ATO whistleblower Richard Boyle.

“Existing whistleblower regimes were inadequate to protect this individual who, as a last resort, was forced to make a disclosure to Senator O’Neill for effective action to be taken to hold KPMG and its senior leadership to account for what are significant failings in the firm’s ethical and professional standards,” the letter read.

This paper follows the parliamentary inquiry into KPMG on 19 June, after a whistleblower disclosed allegations about the firm aired by Deborah O’Neill before the Senate in March.

“The specific allegations raised by the KPMG whistleblower continue to expose significant systemic and structural flaws in the governance and operations of KPMG and the audit and consultancy industry more broadly; and a fundamental lack of ethical and professional standards in the delivery of services that are integral to ensuring the stability and integrity of Australia’s financial system and markets,” the committee said in a statement on 23 June.