A recent Drake International survey of over 800 Australia-wide employees has revealed bullying is still rife in Australian workplaces . More than 50% of survey respondents had witnessed bullying behaviour and over 25% had been a target of bullying themselves. Poor management of the issue by Organisations was also revealed as only 30% of bullying targets and less than 50% of witnesses were satisfied with their organisations handling of the situation. More than 50% also noted the bullying behaviour had been going on for over 6 months.

The document provides recommendations for the scope, disclosure procedures, protection, enforcement, and legislative structure of whistleblower policy. The group agreed on 27 guiding principles for developing whistleblower legislation.

Accompanying the release of the draft principles is an analysis of the whistleblower legislation in ten European countries.

Report of the Inquiry into whistleblowing protection within the Australian Government public sector

By the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs.

On Wednesday 25 February 2009, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs tabled its report on the inquiry into whistleblowing protections within the Australian Government public sector entitled Whistleblower protection: a comprehensive scheme for the Commonwealth public sector.

This book presents results from a program of empirical and comparative legal research into public interest whistleblowing in Australian public sector agencies, undertaken in 2005–08 through the Australian Research Council-funded Linkage Project ‘Whistling While They Work’.

The study was the largest of its kind ever undertaken in Australia, and one of the largest per capita ever undertaken in the world. It has involved six Australian universities, a number of international collaborators and 14 partner organisations, including many Australian public integrity and public sector management agencies.

The ASX Corporate Governance Council (Council) undertook an extensive review of the first edition of the Principles of Good Corporate Governance and Best Practice Recommendations and carried out a public consultation process between November 2006 and February 2007.

On 2 August 2007 the Council released:

The revised Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations (Second Edition Corporate Governance Guidelines)
Council’s response to submissions (PDF 930KB)
A document setting out the differences between the 2003 and 2007 editions of the Principles and Recommendations (PDF 433KB)
Updated and revised Guidelines for Notices of meeting (PDF 50KB)
Media Release (PDF 64KB)
Speech by Eric Mayne, Chair of the ASX Corporate Governance Council, at the launch of the revised Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations (PDF 44KB)
Speech by the Hon. Chris Pearce, Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, to launch the revised Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations (PDF 40KB)
The Council released Revised Supplementary Guidance (PDF 76KB) in June 2008 (see also comparison (PDF 101KB) August 2007 and June 2008).

The documents can be dowloaded from:

http://www.asx.com.au/supervision/governance/revised_corporate_governance_principles_recommendations.htm (please copy & paste link to your browser)

Note:

Effective date

The effective date for the Second Edition Corporate Governance Guidelines is a listed entity’s first financial year commencing on or after 1 January 2008.

Where an entity’s financial year begins on 1 January, disclosure will be required in relation to the financial year 1 January 2008 – 31 December 2008 and will be made in the annual report published in 2009.

Where a listed entity’s financial year begins on 1 July, disclosure will be required in reltion to the financial year 1 July 2008 – 30 June 2009 and will be made in the annual report published in 2009.

Listed entities are encouraged to make an early transition to the Second Edition Corporate Governance Guidelines.

“A coherent, national approach to the revision of whistleblower protection laws needs to be considered by Australian governments”

Media Release
Public Interest Disclosure Legislation in Australia: Towards the Next Generation? – Summary (Final Version)
Public Interest Disclosure Legislation in Australia: Towards the Next Generation? – Full Paper (Final Version)

Section 42

“The Board Audit Committee must establish and maintain policies and procedures for employees of the regulated institution to submit, confidentially, information about accounting, internal control, compliance, audit, and other matters about which the employee has concerns. The Committee should also have a process for ensuring employees are aware of these policies and for dealing with matters raised by employees under these policies.”

Visit: http://www.griffith.edu.au/centre/slrc/whistleblowing/

Australian Standards

Visit: http://www.standards.com.au

National Corporate Governance Standards:-

AS 8000: Good governance principles
AS 8001: Fraud and corruption control
AS 8002: Organizational codes of conduct
AS 8003: Corporate social responsibility
AS 8004: Whistleblower protection programs for entities

Establish, maintain and effectively manage a whistleblowing scheme with the help of AS 8004. This Standard explains how to establish, maintain, implement and effectively manage a whistleblowing mechanism that can apply to employees, executives, directors, outside agents and sub-contractors.

HB 400—2004: Introduction to Corporate Governance
HB 401—2004: Applications of Corporate Governance

The survey was derived from the responses to a questionnaire sent in August 2008 to 2,018 of Australia’s and New Zealand’s largest organisations across the public and private sectors. The questionnaire sought information about fraud incidents within the respondents’ business operations during the period February 2006 to January 2008.1 Usable responses were received from 420 organisations, representing just over 20 percent of the surveys distributed.

The total value of fraud reported was $301.1 million with an average value for each organisation of $1.5 million. Twenty-six respondents reported single frauds with a value of greater than $200 000 each and there were seven organisations where the value of fraud exceeded $3 million.

The most significant initiative taken to reduce the risk of fraud was reviewing and/or improving internal controls (99 percent) and developing a code of conduct/ethics (92 percent). Overall, there was an increase in fraud risk management strategies in place compared to the 2006 survey.

The most significant increases were in performing data analytics (76 percent compared to 19 percent in 2006), developing a fraud control strategy (78 percent compared to 49 percent in 2006), conducting fraud risk assessments (82 percent compared to 50 percent in 2006) and conducting fraud awareness training (64 percent compared to 38 percent in 2006). These results indicate organisations are increasingly following leading practice in fraud risk management.