Whistleblowing – An International and In-House Perspective on the Legal Landscape in the UK and Australia, and the Practical Steps In-House Counsel Anywhere Can Take to Ensure Their Organisation Gets it Right

Abstract

It may be interesting to set out an overview and comparison of the private sector whistleblower protections in Australia and Great Britain. Since the British regime had been in place before I started out as a trainee two decades ago, applying across public and private sectors in the same way, I was surprised to find on arriving in Australia that there did not appear to be comparable protections here for private sector workers (although there was national legislation covering federal public sector workers and different schemes operating in the states). As it happened, a national private sector scheme was on its way, becoming law in July 2019, then ushering in what, on the face of it, appeared to be one of the toughest whistleblower protection regimes in the world.