A Queensland Supreme Court judge has upheld Shell’s claim to legal professional privilege over 68 documents sought by whistleblower Kent Quinlan. What’s the scam?
The scam is that Quinlan sought to have the documents disclosed because at least 50 of them identified him as the whistleblower, but the court found the documents were protected by legal professional privilege.
The judgment goes to show the fundamental flaws in the protection mechanisms available to corporate whistleblowers exposing wrongdoing.
In short, Justice Soraya Ryan of the Supreme Court of Queensland found that even though a document identifies a whistleblower, it does not in itself establish an unlawful disclosure. The consequence of the decision could be far-reaching not just for Kent Quinlan’s case, but for whistleblowers in general.
Kent Quinlan told MWM,
“if this judgment stands, then the corporations legislation in this area is effectively muted and useless, and a company could engineer it such you would not get any records or documents and that you would have to go to trial even to simply confirm you have made a protected disclosure to qualify for protection, which means no corporate whistleblower covered by this legislation would be protected in having made a protected disclosure unless it was determined first by a court that they had made a protected disclosure and the legislation applies to them,
and that’s before being identified and victimised.
More here.
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Kim Wingerei is a businessman turned writer and commentator. He is passionate about free speech, human rights, democracy and the politics of change. Originally from Norway, Kim first came to Australia in 1989. Author of ‘Why Democracy is Broken – A Blueprint for Change’.