Whistleblower Richard Boyle is set to learn his fate after exposing unethical debt-collection practices at the Australian Taxation Office.
Judge Liesl Kudelka will sentence Boyle, 49, in the South Australian District Court, seven years after the former debt collection officer went public with allegations that led to reforms within the ATO.
In a plea deal with prosecutors, the Adelaide man has admitted four criminal charges, reduced from the original 66 laid after he appeared on the ABC’s Four Corners program.
Boyle has admitted disclosing protected information to another entity, making a record of protected information, using a listening device to record a private conversation and recording other people’s tax file numbers.
Each charge carries a maximum penalty of two years’ jail.
Whistleblower Justice Fund founder Rex Patrick said a custodial sentence was unlikely because there had been a plea deal and the government’s lawyers didn’t seek a jail term “but ultimately that’s a decision for the judge”.
Another potential outcome was a conviction with a non-custodial sentence such as a good behaviour bond.
“The third option – which is what a number of people, including myself, wrote to the court urging – was no conviction, basically saying he didn’t operate with malice,” Mr Patrick said.
“He actually thought he was protected. It’s taken four judges, and silks and lawyers to work out whether or not he was protected.
“He went in thinking he was but it turns out that he wasn’t. All he did was press a record button, he took a photograph, he sent an encrypted email to his lawyer.”
In a speech in 2024, Boyle said the experience had left him “broken, physically, mentally and financially”.
The Human Rights Law Centre’s Kieran Pender said prosecuting whistleblowers had “a chilling effect on people speaking up”.
“The sentencing of Richard Boyle concludes a long and sorry saga that significantly undermined whistleblower protections in Australia,” he said.
“It is critical that the Albanese government and Attorney-General Michelle Rowland now act to better protect whistleblowers and ensure cases like this never happen again.”
Mr Patrick said Boyle’s treatment was “disgraceful” and there was no public interest in prosecuting him.
“The federal government knew whistleblower laws were broken and had made a commitment to change them,” he said.
“The attorney-general (Mark Dreyfus) could have, in the public interest, stopped the prosecution, and he didn’t do that.”
Independent senators David Pocock and Jacqui Lambie have tabled the Whistleblower Protection Authority bill in parliament “but that’s only a start”, Mr Patrick said.
“We also need to change the laws so that people are protected when they do reasonable things in the context of preparing a public interest disclosure … the government knows that bit’s broken, and yet they did nothing.”
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