Joint Submission to the Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care Consultation on ‘Foundations of a New Aged Care Act’
This joint submission by the Human Rights Law Centre, Transparency International Australia, and Griffith University’s Centre for Governance and Public Policy, addresses the need for comprehensive, consistent, and holistic reform of Commonwealth whistleblower protection legislation; an approach which should be embedded into the foundations of the Bill for a new Aged Care Act.
Recommendations:
Establish a single Whistleblower Protection Act covering all non-government entities and employers and entities under Commonwealth legislation or subject to Commonwealth regulation – not another separate, duplicatory, potentially inconsistent and burdensome scheme for the specific aged care sector, such as currently exists, enacted as recently as 2021.
That the Department support, as part of the enhanced whistleblower protections that will apply to aged care through the above legislation or otherwise:
all elements of the proposed reforms in the whistleblower framework for the aged care sector except for:
(i) the requirements for the discloser to provide their name in order to be protected as a whistleblower; and
(ii) the ‘good faith’ requirement; both of which are out-of-date, substandard requirements which were deleted from the Commonwealth’s other main whistleblowing laws in 2017; plus
each of the overdue reform priorities also needed to make all other Commonwealth whistleblowing laws fit-for-purpose, as laid out in Protecting Australia’s Whistleblowers: The Federal Roadmap.