Deputy speaker,

Whistle blowers have shown incredible courage, and it’s right that we put into place effective frameworks to protect them.

Whistle blowers play an incredibly important role in exposing wrongdoing and in doing so protect the very fabric of our democracy.

They protect integrity and the rule of law, but without an honest commitment to effective integrity infrastructure in our Commonwealth, that rule of law is always under threat.

Australia’s public interest disclosure law was introduced in 2013 to protect whistle blowers against reprisals by senior officials and to promote integrity in the public service.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus introduced it at that time.

He was conscious that it was going to need to be looked at in the future to assess whether or not it was working in the national interest.

Which is why he wrote a statutory review into that Act.

Labor recognised that a review was necessary to address some of the complexities of that law.

But that statutory review never took place.

Under the Abbott government the Act fell into neglect.

Under the Morrison government, the Philip Moss review took place five years later in 2020.

Protecting whistle blowers wasn’t a big priority for those opposite.

And the Coalition agreed in principle to 30 of that review’s 33 recommendations.

“In principle” being the operative words.

Many would remember that we saw high-profile raids on journalists and other cases of excessive secrecy and secret ministers under the former government.

"It was shameful that the government took some four years to respond to Philip Moss's report," as the now-Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus said before the election.

And he announced the following commitment in 2021:

"We intend, in government, to act on Philip Moss' recommendations for necessary improvements to the public interest disclosure scheme."

Fast forward a year and that is exactly what the Albanese Labor government is doing.

We are committed to ensuring that Australia has effective protections for whistleblowers.

Which is why the Attorney-General announced last week that he would introduce a Bill into the Parliament before the end of this year, so in this sitting block, however long that may be, which will make priority amendments to the Public Interest Disclosure Act.

The PID Act is an important element of the Commonwealth’s integrity and transparency framework.

It enables public officials to disclose suspected wrongdoing by another public official or by an Australian government agency.

Suspected wrongdoing is defined broadly and includes fraud, serious misconduct and corrupt conduct as well as minor wrongdoing.

Public officials who make such disclosures have protections and immunities from liability.

Reforms to the PID Act are long overdue, and action is essential to ensure whistleblowers are supported to come forward with disclosures of public sector wrongdoing and corruption.

The Government’s staged reforms of the PID Act will include the introduction of a Bill to Parliament before the end of this year, and the progression of broader reforms next year to address the underlying complexity of the scheme and provide effective and accessible protections to public sector whistleblowers.

These amendments deliver on the Government’s election commitment to implement key recommendations of the 2016 Review of the Public Interest Disclosure Act by Philip Moss and other parliamentary committee reports.

This Bill will ensure immediate improvements to the public sector whistleblower scheme are in place before the National Anti-Corruption Commission commences in mid-2023.

The second stage of reforms will start next year following passage of the priority amendments.

This will involve redrafting the Public Interest Disclosure Act to address its underlying complexity and provide effective and accessible protections to public sector whistleblowers.

I should add that the Albanese Government’s National Anti-Corruption Commission will also investigate serious or systemic corrupt conduct across the federal public sector in response to a range of referrals from whistleblowers.

That legislation also provided strong protections for whistleblowers and exemptions for journalists to protect the identity of their sources.

Our Government has committed to it, and we will get it done.