Whistleblowers deserve to be heard

THE passing of Sinead O’Connor made me sad.

Just weeks before she died, I cried while watching the documentary Nothing Compares, which charts the Irish singer’s life and career.

It felt as if an inevitable end was coming.

As in life, her death divided her supporters and detractors.

She was fearless, and I loved her for it.

Society and its social mores were her oppressors.

Faced with unwritten rules that children shouldn’t out their parents for neglect; that Catholics cannot talk about child sex abuse by priests; that mental health is not something to be discussed in polite company; and that one shouldn’t challenge the patriarchy: O’Connor sang and spoke of these and more.

And she paid dearly for it.

She was a whistleblower of sorts by putting into the public domain issues that others only talked about behind closed doors.

I have been a whistleblower; I’ve mentored a whistleblower and counselled others. It requires bravery.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission website says: “Whistleblowers play an important role in identifying and calling out misconduct and harm to consumers and the community.

To encourage whistleblowers to come forward with their concerns and protect them when they do, the Corporations Act 2001 (Corporations Act) gives certain people legal rights and protections as whistleblowers.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is probably Australia’s highestprofile contemporary whistleblower.

Those in living memory include NSW anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay and Western Australian brothel owner Shirley Finn.

Each paid an enormous personal cost for their actions, two with their lives.

In the corporate world, the self-harm death of Aishwarya Venkatachalam at EY’s Sydney office was the trigger event leading to the commissioning of an independent review into its workplace culture by former Sex Discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.

The review was a safety-innumbers exercise with 4,000 staff surveyed. Released in July, Ms Broderick’s report found that some staff had experienced racism, bullying and sexual harassment, as well as being overworked.

This had led to mental health concerns.

The review also uncovered that most staff who had experienced one or more these events was unlikely to report it.

The mining and resources sector has a culture of safety first, often measured in the form of lost time injury (LTI).

Detailed in the Employment Law Practical Handbook on health and safety, LTI is defined as: “[A]n injury that results in a worker not being able to report to their next shift at work.

This includes an injury that results in a fatality or permanent disability.”

To my mind, LTI is just one measure of safety (or not) in the workplace.

The sexual harassment called out in the WA Parliamentary report Enough is Enough: Sexual harassment against women in the FIFO mining industry, is a case in point.

Released last year, the Enough is Enough report detailed 79 findings and made 24 recommendations.

Finding two is insightful. “During the course of our inquiry we heard confronting, shocking and compelling stories, brought to us by strong and brave women who have lived these experiences.

We found women often felt intimidated and fearful and this would be constant throughout their workplace stay.

Some suffered severe trauma and long-term adverse impacts from their experience.”

A decade ago, I led the Filling the Pool gender (in)equality project for the Committee for Perth.

The study was an attempt to understand the barriers to women’s participation and progression in workplaces in this state using a fact-based approach.

Its success came from each of the stories from the women interviewed as they shared their career journeys.

The project also included interviews with some of Perth’s most powerful men, each readily agreeing to take part.

However, before agreeing to take part, almost all the 100 senior women who participated wanted my personal assurance that it was a legitimate study and that their anonymity was guaranteed.

As I said at a UN International Women’s Day event in 2021, “what does this say about this town?”

If we took a whistleblower-style approach to Perth, what would we uncover? As with Filling the Pool, what is holding us back is likely to be both cultural and structural.

The structural is easy to identify and fix; the cultural much harder.

• Marion Fulker is an adjunct associate professor at UWA