Whistleblowers could make significant difference to protect climate and environment in Australia
With the rising influence of fossil fuel industries over Australian politics, the Human Rights Law Centre has produced a new resource to protect and empower environmental and climate whistleblowers.
The Climate and Environmental Whistleblowing Information Guide is an Australian-first practical legal resource to support any person in Australia to raise concerns about climate and environmental wrongdoing.
Whistleblowers make Australia a better place by exposing human rights violations, government wrongdoing and corporate misdeeds. But Australia’s whistleblower laws are complex and the recent prosecutions of high-profile whistleblowers David McBride and Richard Boyle have had a significant chilling effect.
While there is growing recognition of the role whistleblowers play in climate and environmental justice globally across Europe, the US and South America, climate and environmental whistleblowers are still relatively new in Australia.
Climate and environmental whistleblowers are needed to hold public and private sectors in Australia accountable to playing their part for a healthy, sustainable planet.
Despite all of the evidence pointing the need to phase out fossil fuels to address the existential threat of climate change, there are 116 new coal and gas plants in development before 2030, and the Australian Government is providing a $1.5 billion dollar subsidy for the Middle Arm gas hub in NT.
Regina Featherstone, Senior Lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre said:
“Australia is staring down the barrel of climate catastrophe. Climate and environmental whistleblowers have the potential to make a huge impact in the pursuit of climate justice. They are real, everyday people who go to work and see wrongdoing which puts our planet at risk and bravely speak up.
“They have the power to disrupt markets, stop environmental destruction and alert the public to fraudulent emissions reporting – we can all only benefit from climate and environmental whistleblowers in Australia.”
Read the Climate and Environmental Whistleblowing Information Guide here
Image Credit: Alex Westover, Greenpeace
Media Contact:
Thomas Feng
Director, Engagement
Human Rights Law Centre
0431 285 275
thomas.feng@hrlc.org.au
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We pay our respect to Elders past and present. This land always was, and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land. Sovereignty has never been ceded.
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