https://michaelwest.com.au/whistleblower-persecution-the-cost-of-ignoring-those-who-dare-speak-out/

QUOTE BEGINS

Whistleblowers everywhere act for reasons of conscience and integrity. They are vital to protect our society against corruption and power abuse, yet they are often persecuted for speaking out. Whistleblower Tony Watson reports from experience.

Whistleblowers are compelled to speak out, most often against their own organisation, in order to maintain their self-respect. “How could I keep my head up, and look people in the eye, if I kept quiet?”

But it is that very sense of self-respect that is targeted and hurt by the retaliations of the organisation they expose. It is precisely why humiliation makes such an effective tool. Driven by their own moral compass, whistleblowers are portrayed as unstable, money-seeking grubs.

C. Fred Alford, in his book Whistleblowers: Broken Lives and Organisational Power, calls this the “nuts and sluts” strategy: The key organisational strategy is to transform an act of whistleblowing from

an issue of policy and principle into an act of private disobedience and psychological disturbance.

As well as gaslighting, shunning, marginalising and ostracism, there are rumours, questioning the employee’s performance, threats, harassment, reprimands, demotions, forced transfers, assignment to trivial duties, dismissal and blacklisting. The fate of a whistleblower is unattractive and lonely.

As a society, we sense that whistleblowing matters and that the cost of ignoring whistleblowers could be huge. All too often, when there is a scandal or disaster, it transpires that it could have been avoided or mitigated if someone who knew of it spoke up, or if their message had been heeded when they did speak up.

Timely, then, is a report by the UK Whistleblowing Charity Protect, released early February. The charity’s report, The Cost of Whistleblowing, analyses three UK disasters that unfolded largely after whistleblowers had raised concerns. They are the Post Office Horizon Scandal, the multiple deaths of babies at the Countess of Chester Hospital, and the collapse of construction giant Carillion.

Most whistleblower scandals share a basic timeline. Financial costs are incurred before and after someone blows the whistle and fall into three broad categories: Unavoidable, Avoidable, and Fallout. Unavoidable Costs precede the whistleblower and are incurred irrespective of any action by the company. These costs are not included in the figures below. Avoidable Costs are incurred because the whistleblower is ignored.

Fallout Costs follow the scandal becoming public and are associated with investigating the failings that caused it.

In all three instances, the figures are large. £178m for the Post Office Scandal; £39m for the Hospital Scandal; and £209m for the Carillion Collapse. In the case of the Post Office, aside from the financial costs, ignoring the whistleblowers resulted in wrecked lives, false convictions, and suicides. In the Hospital Scandal, seven babies were killed.

MWM has published a series of stories about whistleblowers in Australia.

We could add and then analyse our own scandals to this sorry list. Robodebt is a good example. Several staff raised concerns about the unlawful and unfair nature of the scheme, as aired in the Royal Commission. But none triggered the necessary responses and legal protections. As Royal Commissioner Catherine Holmes observed in her final Report:

“The disastrous effects of Robodebt became apparent soon after it moved, in September 2016, from the last part of the limited release, involving around 1000 recipients, to sending out 20,000 notifications per week. In December 2016 and January 2017 the media, traditional and social, were saturated with articles about people who had had demonstrably wrong debts raised against them, and in many instances heard of it first when contacted by debt collectors.

“The human impacts of Robodebt were being reported: families struggling to make ends meet receiving a debt notice at Christmas, young people being driven to despair by demands for payment, and, horribly, an account of a young man’s suicide…

“What was, in fact, clear was that there were a number of senior departmental officers who did not understand the online compliance system or its effects. To compound that problem, when people like [whistleblower] Ms Taylor raised legitimate concerns, which in substance reflected the reality of what was occurring to those subject to the system, they were, effectively, ignored.”

How much did this debacle cost us?

Viktor Frankl’s words have become the whistleblower’s creed: “What is to give light must endure the burning.” But it should not be so.

Whistleblower stories can be depressing: their experiences are traumatic, their treatment by big corporates is grossly unfair, and their efforts are often in vain. And yet, there are a few hopeful signs. First, whistleblowers and the role they play are getting more airtime. Naming a problem is an important step in addressing it.

Second, although disillusioningly slow, the Government has promised better whistleblower protections. Even symbolic political promises can reflect underlying societal expectations. And just last week, four independents, Andrew Wilkie, Helen Haines, Jacqui Lambie and David Pocock, introduced a Bill into Parliament to establish a Whistleblower Protection Authority.

Third, more whistleblowers and their supporters are sharing their stories. Across the globe, there are organisations springing up to help and support whistleblowers, such as the Human Rights Law Centre (HRLC).

The sharing of information and experiences and offers of support are indicative of a better future.

It can’t come soon enough.

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https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/03/10/safeguard-mechanism-carbon-emissions-labor-plibersek/

QUOTE BEGINS

It is deeply weird that one of Labor’s most expansive climate policies is also one of its least mentioned. The “safeguard mechanism” — a policy that purportedly limits the greenhouse gas emitted by Australia’s heavy industry and fossil mining facilities — covers a full third of Australia’s domestic emissions. Yet it barely exists in public discourse. Why?

Safeguard has a grim origin, with Labor having rejigged a Coalition policy instead of designing its own (wedging opponents takes precedence over deploying policy that works). Safeguard’s progenitor, the Coalition’s “emissions reduction fund”, set limits high above actual emissions (amusingly, as emissions rose, these limits often gently floated upwards).

It was an IKEA houseplant: it looked real, but only from a great distance.

Due to the higher climate policy standards faced by Labor, it had to achieve the same goal using different tactics. The carbon offsetting industry came to the rescue.

Like the old scheme, safeguard sets emissions targets for each facility. Unlike the old scheme, these targets fall over time, meaning theoretically the facility should cut its pollution to comply. Naturally, there’s a glaring loophole: a company can meet the targets even when its pollution is above the limit by purchasing an equivalent number of Australian carbon offsets.

Another option is that overperforming facilities which are under their target can “trade” credit units with others over theirs, but this is unlikely in the short term (and would be more expensive for a polluter than just buying normal offsets).

Safeguard is frequently defended (and derided) as a form of “carbon pricing” — being forced to pay for offsets is a financial disincentive against high emissions. Offsets are exceedingly cheap, have the added benefit of fake neutralisation of your climate damage, and fossil fuel companies swimming in record-breaking super profits only use a tiny fraction of those profits for the required number of offsets. Worst of all, the money ends up in the pockets of carbon trading corporations, rather than the government.

A red-hot political debate ensued: the Greens pushed for real emissions cuts, but Labor won the vibes contest. Tuning safeguard to mandate real, deep emissions cuts was decried as excessive perfectionism that would resurface Australia’s mythical “climate wars”.

Once safeguard passed, it was memory-holed. It only gets exhumed when Labor tries to defend its passivity around the expansion of coal and gas. When Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was pushed on including a “climate trigger” in mine approvals, he muttered that “climate issues are dealt with through the safeguard mechanism”. When Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek was pressed on the same, she dismissed it, saying, “The safeguard mechanism is the way that we deal with carbon emissions in this country … it’s bringing down carbon emissions.”

Safeguard came into effect July 1, 2023, and we won’t get official data on its first full financial year of operations until April 15. However, we can prod existing data to check if it really is “bringing down carbon emissions”.

Quarterly federal emissions data gives us a rough overview. Looking at the sectors that cover heavy industry in Australia (with the caveat that non-safeguard facilities are covered here too), there has been zero noticeable difference to each sector’s greenhouse gas emissions from mid-2023 through to the end of 2024

A Climate Change Authority (CCA) “progress report” examined the first year of safeguard in detail using preliminary data, and found 153 of the covered 215 facilities had emissions higher than the limit set by the Clean Energy Regulator. Thirty-one of those facilities exceeded their limits by 30%. In aggregate, all of the sites that are meant to be regulated by this scheme emitted 10.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent above the total limit.

In short: no change beyond business as usual, despite the new targets. But the massive, widespread beaching of targets means the guaranteed mass purchase of “Australian carbon credit units”, or ACCUs.

Safeguard is an incredible demand fabrication engine for carbon offsets. The CCA cites modelling that shows between 58% to 68% of compliance with the scheme will be met using offsets instead of real emissions reductions out to 2030. “Safeguard facilities’ reliance on ACCUs to meet obligations is forecast to drive ACCU demand out to 2030. ACCU prices are forecast to increase as a result of the growth in demand for ACCUs”, the report says.

The CCA offers a confident forecast of future carbon offset profits, and a nervous shrug about whether real emissions will be cut. That is before it details that there will be 31 million tonnes of new emissions to be added to the scheme’s coverage up to 2030, 21 million of which relate to coal, oil and gas “carbon bomb” projects.

While it’s almost certain the first year of the scheme did nothing for real emissions, it has already created a massive surge in demand for Australia’s highly criticised carbon offsetting scheme. The Clean Energy Regulator’s new quarterly report reveals the growing stockpiles of carbon offsets specifically for meeting the safeguard mechanism’s ratcheting targets

The highest emitters in safeguard can pay a pittance to indefinitely comply with the scheme. But they still consider it an irritation and have restarted calls for compliance to be opened up to allow cheap international carbon offsets — even more controversial than Australia’s heavily criticised scheme.

Profits for carbon markets thrive in two conditions: “ambitious” net-zero targets paired with zero will to actually reduce emissions. Voluntary targets are already starting to shudder and shift thanks to the unashamed fossil-fascist permission space of TrumpWorld 2025. If Peter Dutton were to become prime minister, he could wreck this regulatory capture paradise for Australia’s fossil fuel and offsetting industries. Equally, Dutton might recognise the value of mandated greenwashing schemes. The offsets lobby is already pleading with him to keep it in place.

You aren’t meant to look too closely at the safeguard mechanism. The formulas, acronyms and faux-complexity are there to obscure the simple dual stories of protectionism and cronyism from two massive, interlocking fossil/offsetting industries.

It’s a plastic houseplant: you leave it on the windowsill and let it look vaguely like something real and respiring.

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This bloke has done so much nasty stuff in his political life, so atm i dunno how i feel about this.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8911903/senior-liberal-philip-ruddock-joins-forces-with-teal-candidate

QUOTE BEGINS

High-profile former Howard government minister Philip Ruddock has lent his weight to the local teal campaign in a video designed to protect trees.

Mr Ruddock, who was mayor of Hornsby council in Sydney for seven years after serving in federal parliament for 43 years, lost Liberal party preselection for council leadership in 2024.

Now, the 81-year-old has appeared in a social media campaign video with Tina Brown, the Climate 200-backed independent candidate for the federal electorate of Berowra.

Mr Ruddock suggests in the video there could be something "sinister" behind a move by the local Liberal-led council to change vegetation rules around development in the name of safety.

Any changes could affect the tree preservation orders his father and former Hornsby shire president introduced in the 1950s, he said.

"Global warming is exceedingly significant," Mr Ruddock says in the video, posted to social media on Saturday, March 8 as ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred bore down on Australia's east coast.

Ms Brown has launched a petition on the back of the issue, demanding transparency around decisions affecting tree protection in the local area.

Mr Ruddock played down the political significance of his appearance in the video when he spoke to ACM, the publisher of this masthead.

"My comments were made immediately I became aware of the mayoral minute and were based upon my personal experience," Mr Ruddock said.

"I have not resigned from the Liberal Party and I've made it very clear that I intended to support, particularly [Liberal candidate] Scott Yung in Bennelong, and that would be my preferred role during this campaign."

Mr Ruddock's wife, Heather, has already quit the Liberal Party and is supporting Ms Brown's federal election campaign.

Formerly John Howard's attorney-general and immigration minister, he oversaw the "children overboard" affair in 2001 and has sat on the Liberal party's federal and state executive.

Mr Ruddock said he was on the panel to preselect Gisele Kapterian for the Liberals in Bradfield, the federal electorate that sits adjacent to Berowra, currently held by Paul Fletcher who is retiring.

The Climate 200-backed candidate, Nicolette Boele, is considered to have a strong chance.

"Bradfield is certainly competitive," Mr Ruddock told ACM.

He also acknowledged Berowra was not a sure thing for the Coalition.

It's held by Liberal MP Julian Leeser with a 7.56 per cent margin.

"But I also think that the assumption that Berowra is a safe seat and that you don't have to be concerned about it is put to one side when you look at the way in which Julian Leeser is campaigning."

Asked about his specific mention of global warming in the video with Tina Brown, Mr Ruddock said trees were important to combat heat.

"I have spoken in council about the impact of trees in the streets and the way in which they ameliorate the impact of heat," he said.

"If people don't understand in the context of what we are experiencing now the value of trees, I think they're being very foolish."

Berowra covers a broad area of north-western Sydney, including bushland and farmland, but is being rapidly developed to accommodate Sydney's growing population.

Its boundaries were changed when the seat of North Sydney was abolished.

A federal election has to be held by May 17.

Hornsby Shire Council was contacted for comment.

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