Page 3348 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 17 August 2011

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(2) calls on the Chief Minister to:

(a) develop a strategy to protect and provide due recourse for compensation to whistleblowers who suffered reprisals in the ACT Public Service and to present this by the last sitting day in September 2011;

(b) implement this strategy by the last sitting day in November 2011; and

I rise to talk about this very important issue today because we are seeing from so many different quarters and so many different areas of this government just how rotten to the core this government is and how it treats those who dare speak out against it. These are no longer isolated examples but a pattern of behaviour, overseen by this government, of retribution towards those who dare speak out against it, towards those who dare criticise what this government does.

The examples are many; today I am going to focus on a few of them to show just how widespread this attitude is within the government and that, because this attitude is so widespread in the government, it can only be as a result of the lead that is shown by the leaders of this government, namely, the Chief Minister and her ministers. This comes from the top down. We see it flow through agencies and departments in the way that they treat people who dare speak out, who dare question, who dare say the government is getting it wrong or who dare highlight waste in government, wrong priorities in government or interference in statutory processes.

I would like to go through a few of those. We have seen in recent days the case of Debbie Scattergood. The case of Debbie Scattergood is just another case of how this government treats whistleblowers and how this government treats people who speak out against them.

Debbie Scattergood revealed that TAMS had wasted taxpayers’ money on a $15 million contract for unforeseen expenditures. In return for highlighting this discrepancy, she suffered discrimination at her workplace for four years, with the added insult of having her department try to restructure her out of a job, not to mention findings of a biased report against her and allegations of a cover-up.

This is shameful behaviour. The result of her ill-treatment by her employers at TAMS left her with reactive depression, and the strain on her finances forced her to sell her home. This is how the ACT Labor government treats a 30-year veteran of the ACT public service for, as the Price report states, having legitimately raised a genuine concern. All in all, it took Ms Scattergood one year to get reports of investigations of her own mistreatment, costing her $22,000 in legal fees. At a time when the Chief Minister promised to make the ACT government the most transparent government in Australia, TAMS failed to issue 17 of 21 key possible findings in the reports sent to her. The first challenge for the Chief Minister is: is she going to release all the documents in relation to Ms Scattergood? Mr Hanson will be moving an amendment to my motion to that effect. Will they release all of the documents?

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