Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Just briefly, as I understand time will be running out on the debate, we will be supporting this motion. We should at least have the debate in this place. People were rightly shocked by the revelations of war crimes, and I think the Australian population is generally supportive of a process to hold people who've committed wrongdoing to account. But I think people would also be shocked if they knew that the whistleblower who is the very reason that the whole process is happening is now being prosecuted himself and could find himself in jail. That would come as a shock to people. I take the points that have been made about interference in the prosecution process, but we've also got to confront the reality that we don't have proper protection for whistleblowers in this country. There needs to be stronger protection for whistleblowers, especially in this instance, where the government has admitted that something went wrong in Afghanistan and has now put in place a process that could lead to prosecutions. Having admitted that something was wrong, why then oversee the prosecution of the whistleblower? Yes, we can have the debate about whether or not there are any instances in which it is appropriate for there to be an intervention and we should at least be allowed to have that debate. The power is there, and there's a good case to be made that this is the kind of exceptional circumstance that the power was inserted there for in the first place. We should at least be allowed to have the debate and ask the question: if the power is there for these rare interventions, then what is the threshold for that power ever being exercised if not now? Someone could be going to jail for blowing the whistle on what happened in Afghanistan when the government itself has admitted that things went wrong there. So it is incumbent on us to have a full debate here. That's why the standing orders should be suspended. It is incumbent on us today to have a full debate about that and for the government to clearly justify its position as to why it considers it is appropriate to oversee someone potentially going to jail for doing no more than blowing the whistle.

See this speech in context