Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee, , 48:49 to 51:12
Examination of AHPRA's whistleblower framework, focusing on the independence of the Deloitte hotline and management of internal conflicts.
Topics: Whistleblower protections, Integrity
Speakers: Speaker 11, Justin Untersteiner, Unknown Speaker
Sorry to sorry to play musical chairs. Good morning. Good morning. Um's whistleblower policy states that ARPRA's general counsel is also the designated public interest disclosure officer, and uh and that Deloitte's external hotlines extended or intended to provide independent whistleblower pathways. Um says that Deloitte's operate an independent whistleblower hotline for disclosures regarding improper conduct within ARPRA and the national boards. Um can you explain to me how uh independence is achieved and maintained when a whistleblower complaint lodged through the Deloitte portal is ultimately responded to by ARPRA's own general counsel?
Sure. Um I have general counsel here who may also have some comments, but from my perspective, we do have processes built into that, which means if there is a um If there is a disclosure that's made that does relate to general counsel, that Deloitte will not provide that to general counsel and general counsel won't have access. So that would be escalated to the next officer. That could be me as the CEO. If that disclosure related to myself, it would bypass both myself and general counsel, and that would be escalated to the chair of the board.
By Deloitte, right. Okay.
Independent.
But I mean you except that there would be a perceived conflict otherwise if that were wasn't the case if there weren't processes in place.
Of course, and that's why we have those processes in place, Senator.
Okay. And so to that end, you would say that the public can have confidence that ARPA is not investigating itself or you know, effectively being seen to investigate itself.
Correct.
Yep. Okay. That's actually for that line of questioning for different answers. There were different different sub questions. So the other only other questions, Chair, I had were for the CDC if I've still got a bit of time. I haven't got many.