The release of diplomatic cables by Wikileaks is a wonderful source of history, political analysis, economic titbits and high grade gossip, but is it effective ‘whistleblowing’, asks a Charles Sturt University (CSU) researcher.

 

Mr Peter Roberts, an expert in whistleblowing in the public sector, argues whistleblowing is where an employee sees what they consider a wrongdoing in the organisation and acts to bring their suspicions to the attention of someone with the authority to act upon them. 

 

“But this latest release from Wikileaks is a dump of interesting material, which is left to an unspecified, undefined authority to determine whether there is wrongdoing and what to do about it. Diplomatic cables are only one element of a complex of administrative events. The unspecified authority will need to locate and analyse the vast array of other material relating to each issue to make some judgment about the wrongdoing,” Mr Roberts says.

 

“Any employee who witnesses wrongdoing should be actively encouraged to report it without the fear of suffering any adverse consequences. Implicit in this process is that any suspicions need to be thoroughly investigated and, if found to be true, acted upon.

 

“I don’t think dumping vast amounts of sensitive material on the Internet in the hope that someone, somewhere, will identify, investigate and rectify the wrongdoing is effective whistleblowing. The nature of the issues makes it difficult for even the most persistent and well resourced journalist to take these matters further.”

 

Recent Australian research funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC) into whistleblowing that was led by Mr Roberts showed that most employees who observe wrongdoing want to talk to their supervisors about it.

 

“We found that over 97 per cent of public sector employees who had reported wrongdoing made their initial report within the public sector, and three quarters of those to their supervisors.  Only 1.8 per cent reported it to a member of parliament and less than one per cent to the media.

 

“There is not a multitude of public servants bursting to tell the world about the contents of their filing cabinets. Most governments in Australia are reviewing whistleblowing legislation to make it possible for employees to disclose wrongdoing to the media but only if the issue is serious, has been reported internally and nothing done about it.  Queensland has already moved in this direction and the federal Rudd government had committed itself to this course of action.

 

Mr Roberts states that government organisations have assumed a right to communicate confidentially, but accept that confidentiality may have to be set aside for public interest in cases of criminal activity, fraud, corruption, abuse of power, danger to public safety or the environment.

 

“The latest Wikileaks release could compromise the benefits of confidential communications between governments with no obvious benefit of righting a wrong. I see few benefits in this action for whistleblowers who wish to come forward with specific cases of wrongdoing.”