Government sector workers should be legally obliged to report any knowledge of workplace fraud or corruption, says Brian Hood.
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Mr Hood is the former Reserve Bank employee whose disclosures sparked one of Australia's largest overseas bribery scandals.
Speaking in the wake of new laws this week that will protect public sector whistleblowers from legal and other reprisals, Mr Hood said that greater protections were welcome, but they might not encourage people to come forward with information.
The former company secretary of Note Printing Australia, whose disclosures led to overseas bribery charges against nine former bank officials, said mandatory reporting laws could change the game.
"The new laws are about protecting the whistleblower and that's a great first step," Mr Hood said. "On certain illegal activities, maybe there should be some mandatory reporting where it's not just left up to the goodwill of some whistleblowers but there would actually be a compulsory, mandatory reporting environment which would encourage a culture of reporting."
Mr Hood, who endured harassment and reprisals after he spoke out against Securency paying bribes to secure overseas currency printing contracts, said he believed more wrongdoing would be uncovered if staying silent was no longer an option.
"If they stayed silent and turned a blind eye, then they would be feeling very uncomfortable - as they should - and I think that that is something that would take the thing a step further," he said.
One of the political architects of the new laws said resistance at the upper levels of the public service was partly to blame for the lengthy delay in getting the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 onto the statute books.
Outgoing independent MP Rob Oakeshott said that greater co-operation between public service bosses and the rank-and-file would be needed to make the laws a success.
"My read over the past three years, was that one of the blocks to this legislation actually getting up was some within the senior public service who saw this as a threat," Mr Oakeshott said.
"A lot of coffee-shop conversations in Canberra are about bitching about senior management, and that's going to be the cultural change needed to use whistleblowing legislation in a trusting way to resolve whatever the issue is."