This is an accurate and chilling break down of the insidious manner in which whistleblowers are treated.

I congratulate the author, and also OLO for running this feature on whistle blowing and offering an opportunity for identification and discussion of the sinister practices institutions use to silence those who try to blow the whistle.

A really excellent piece. It's not just internal whistleblowers who are treated this way. I have been fighting to get the CSa to acknowledge their own failures of process and of duty-of-care for nearly 8 years. Last year, after ignoring or refusing to listen to my complaints for years, the Ombudsman's Office did an "own motion investigation of the ways in which the CSa fails to advance fairness by its activities. The report was almost a word-for-word repetition of my own complaints.

The CSA is now undergoing a massive program of cultural change. designed to implement the recommendations of the Ombudsman. That still beghs the question of why there will be no action taken against the senior membes of the organisation who refused to respond to the exact same complaints that the Ombudsman upheld. There has been no suggestion that any of the senior management of the Agency should be held accountable for their failure to live up to their responsibilities under the Public Service Act, which allows for penalties up to imprisonment for such breaches.

As long as the Public Service is protected by its own there can be no transparency and little respect for their role.

It is telling that among the first positions advertised after the release of the Ombudsman's report were "Media Liasison Officers" and "Ministerial Liaison Officers".

I agree with briar rose.

While I've personally never been in anything
like the situation that Robina Cosser describes,
I can well imagine the awful and frustrating
situation that she describes so well.

The article reminds me of nothing less than
Franz Kafka'a 'The Trial'.

I recall reading amongst formal complaints upheld evidence is the complainant remains the one to suffer; little, if anything, happens to the one/s that the complaint is against. Those identified as corrupt and prosecuted/penalised are usually those who break the ‘golden rule’. That rule is if all the pigs have their snout in the trough no one squeals – don’t endanger the mob.

Who is in a position to act? In NSW the separation of powers seems a fiction. Without that separation who will call anyone to account for corruption/incompetence. All have bought the lie that “I am just looking after myself” rather than those values encapsulated in Servant Leadership – few remain who hold to even a vague concept of God. Many act as though the statement ‘there are no absolutes’ is true (ignoring the problem of the statement being an absolute).

If all are merely looking to self interest who then will look to public interest? If life values are purely relative with what is right to me only being right to another if they choose the same things then who has a basis for acting against corruption? Any majority choice of values can only be transitory, another time and place and decisions change.

Yes, the system can not succeed because the underlying life values of self preclude public interest. No, in the case in the article the outcome has little to do with the players, it is an outcome determined by failed life values.

I was naïve for a long time. I used to think that my department valued its own rules and guidelines – rules that its own people had come up with, and that when these rules were broken or just ignored, they’d be interested to hear about it and do something accordingly.

I also used to think that my department valued its own code of conduct, for which all staff are required to do a sort of examination to show that they have read and understood it. I thought they’d be interested in knowing about instances where senior staff broke or just ignored the code and would be supportive in doing something about it.

Well, I now know that one sure way of getting yourself offside with people and of basically skittling your career is to have a conscience and to strive to uphold the rules and, gently, via due process, try to keep others on-track as well.

I now know that the right thing to have done would have been to just ignore all infringements.

Ludwig, you have never broken the rules?

Therein lies the problem; if justice is served then who would not be punished? “I only used the Department’s phone for a private call, it’s not like I stole” or “I was only 5 minutes late, that’s no big deal”. These are all perks of the job. Or are they more?

Who in Departments does not have the snout in a trough big or small? Who gives value for money or service of any kind? Yes the system is rotten; our political masters are corrupt as they hold no values other than winning the media war and greasing the wheels of donors supporting their cause. The next level down within Public Service follows their masters’ actions and behaves in kind. No it is not a case of the big being punished, who in the system is not rorting it at some level using it to their own ends? There is no difference between petty corruption and grand corruption – all is corrupt.

As Mohandas Gandhi put it “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind”.

Until we live by life values outside ourselves the behaviours being complained of will go on, the players may change but the game continues.