A powerful parliamentary committee is holding its first full day of hearings into Labor's proposed National Anti-Corruption Commission with witnesses attending from the Attorney-General's Department and the Australian Federal Police.

While much of the criticism of the bill has been focused on a "restrictive" threshold set before public hearings can be held, human rights experts are also concerned with how those coming forward will be protected.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus promised additional protections for whistleblowers within the proposed watchdog model but pledged to reform outdated public interest disclosure reforms too.

Human Rights Law Centre senior lawyer, Kieran Pender, said the promises, however, did not go far enough.

Mr Pender said the world was moving on in terms of how it supported whistleblowers and simply implementing obsolete recommendations from the last review, completed in 2015 by eminent public servant Philip Moss, was inadequate.

It left would-be whistleblowers without much confidence things would be different under the new anti-corruption body.

"For this to work ultimately, we need people who see wrongdoing to speak up about it to the NACC [national anti-corruption commission]," Mr Pender said.

"We have a state of play in Australia where whistleblowers have been under attack for the best part of a decade. We have two whistleblowers on trial right now.

"I think what that means is that many people who see corrupt conduct issues - that will engage the jurisdiction of the NACC - will have serious and well-founded concerns about speaking up to the NACC."

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The trial of former Australian Taxation Office agent Richard Boyle is underway before a South Australia court, where he faces a number of charges after exposing his former employee's debt collection tactics to the media.

He is one of a number of high-profile whistleblowers who have been pursued by the Commonwealth in recent years with the trial against former Army lawyer David McBride - who exposed alleged war crimes in Afghanistan - due to begin next week.

The Canberra Times last month also revealed fresh details of an attempted public interest disclosure years earlier, resulting in a security guard losing his employment.

Mr Pender said the Commonwealth's pursuit of whistleblowers showed the laws weren't sufficient, and why there was a strong need for an independent whistleblower protection commissioner or authority.

"These laws aren't working in practice," he said.

"If you're a whistleblower, and you want to go to the NACC, but you're concerned about your legal rights, what do you do? Who do you go to?

"The answer is, at the moment, there is a vacuum."

Parliamentary committee hearings into the proposed national anti-corruption body will continue on Wednesday and Thursday with further hearings expected next week.

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