What would you have done if you'd found the Jake Kovco disc?

[Violet_Crumble]

Would you have run it straight to that wanker Derryn Hinch? I sure wouldn't have. Whoever did gave no thought at all to what Jake Kovco's family have already been through. And seeing how every time I've been in the Qantas Club it's chockablock full of public servants, I would have stopped and reminded myself that leaking sensitive information could lose me my job regardless of which department I'm working for. So, if whoever took it to the radio station was a pube, I hope they get tracked down and get their arse kicked from here to tomorrow...

Violet...

[Random_Australian]

1. What happened? I haven't seen yet....

[Generarth]

2. I would have

Sent one copy to his widow, made a hundred others and sent them to every journalist in Australia, put it up on a website and if possible emailed it to all the troops in Iraq.

[Matilda]

3. If I was going to give it to anyone, I'd send it to Tony Jones.

I'd never trust any commercial radio or TV outlet, they always have their own agenda.

As for the family, I doubt they'd ever hear the truth from Defence anyway. A leak is their best
chance of finding out anything at all.

[Djinn]

4. Wouldn't send it to Derryn

but I'd pass it on to a few journo friends who are a tad less sensationalist. whilst I have every sympathy for his family I also think the chances of the govt coming clean on how/why he died and why they lied about it are slim at best. Presumably the family would also like to know the truth about what happened rather than have a defence department whitewash as has been the casr for several defence suicide families. When a professional soldier shoots himself in the head in his barracks and it's claimed the gun "fell and went off" there are questions that need to be answered honestly - something this government particularly can't be trusted to do.

If the person who found it was employed in the PS then I hope he's NEVER tracked down, this government don't go easy on people who embarras them despite their claims of supporting and protecting whistleblowers and without people like that we'd be even more in the dark than we are now.

[Violet_Crumble]

5. You'd do that if you were a public servant?

You'd breach the APS Code of Conduct, plus any confidentiality stuff you signed when you were first employed, as well as knowingly ruin the career of someone in Defence who made a massive blunder, and then label yrself a whistleblower? Djinn, the APS is supposed to be apolitical, which means that we're not allowed to use information we have as part of our work to 'embarress' anyone depending on what party is in power and whether we approve of their policies or not. If we all decided we could act on our personal political stances and go running off to the media with sensitive information we have when we've got a govt we don't like, the entire public service would end up collapsing...

If the person who handed the disc to the radio station was a public servant, they're in no way a whistleblower. Whistleblowers are folk who report corruption within the APS itself, and they report it to their Agency Head, not to Derryn Hinch. Now, if they were a public servant and one of their colleagues found out it was them, that colleague would be a whistleblower if they reported it...

Violet...

[Djinn]

6. If I thought the public would be better

off knowing than whatever it was being covered up by bureaucrats? K'noath. I've seen first hand how internal reporting works, more often than not it doesn't.

It has nothing to do with "embarrassing" anyone and regardless of what I sign when I start a job, if I became aware of something that I thought the public should know and without action on my part they wouldn't know, then yeah I'd shout it from rooftops if I had to.

I've done it before in a private company, I lost my job and a significant amount of money but something rather important came out of it.

If I read in the found defence report something that suggested that defence was trying to cover something up then to be honest my first contact would be to his family, I'd let them decide what to do because in all reality if defence (and Nelson & Howard) covered up a suicide and tried to make mileage out of it (my take, and every member of the armed services that I've spoken to's take on the sitch) then it's hardly the worst spin they've pulled and it seems that Australians don't give a shit about being lied to over stuff that effects them - this guy's death doesn't.

In short though, if I found out something that I thought the public needed to know, regardless of whether it made a party I supported look bad, then I'd make it public.

The public service (at senior and policy levels at least) has been seriously warped lately into being nothing more than arse coverers for the government. The public service (of which I am currently a part) work for the public and if the public is being duped or lied to they have every right to know - I never said anything about blathering simply because I didn't like a policy (shit I work in communications, I not only keep schtum about crappy policies, I have to fucking promote them)

[Matilda]

7. I agree with what you say.

My first thought in answer to Violet's original question was that I'd do the right thing and hand
the disc to the club staff. But then I thought, no - this is probably the best chance we all have
of getting answers to what happened, so give it to somebody who'll use it in the best way.

The most famous whistleblowers - people like Daniel Ellsberg and Phillip Arantz in Australia,
were public servants. They had information that simply wasn't available to the public, and wasn't
about to be made available, and they thought people should know the truth. It takes tremendous
courage, because not only are their careers going to be ruined, they cop heaps of shit, often for
the rest of their lives.

Another recent example is David Kelly in England - he told the unpalatable truth, and paid for it
(so I believe). I think they should be applauded - bugger the P.S. rules. Sometimes rules just
have to be broken in the true public interest.

[Violet_Crumble]

8. I totally disagree with you...

And you know why? If yr sitting there deciding you can breach the APS Code of Conduct when you think the public would be better off knowing something, one of yr colleagues with different ideas on what you think the public would be better off knowing would have just as much right to go to the media on things they, not you, think the public needs to know, who more often than not end up getting half the facts wrong anyway. So which of you would be right? What makes either of you the final arbiter of what the public needs to know? And what happens if the public 'need to know' is in conflict with the public interest of keeping individual's information private, eg taxpayers records?

You've seen first hand how whistleblowing is handled in the APS? The processes for handling it is the same in every Commonwealth department, and that includes it being designed so the whistleblower can take their complaint outside of the department to the APSC. And at least in the department I'm in, the system works more often than not. There's way more protection for whistleblowers in the public service than there are for those in the private sector. But as I pointed out, there's a huge difference between whistleblowing, which is exposing corruption, and what that person at the airport did if they were an APS employee...

When it comes to 'bugger the rules', as Matilda put it, there are of course the extreme scenarios where I think just about everyone would figure that nothing is worth staying silent, and one of those scenarios would be where staying silent would cost someone's life. I don't know if they do it now for the top level security clearances, but years back when I got one for another department, in the interview I was given a scenario along those lines and asked how I'd react. I said I'd make it public, and I think they were looking for whether or not someone would give them an honest answer, coz I got that clearance....

Hey, we've got something in common here. I'm in a comms team as well. What are you like at developing comms strategies? I'm applying for a comms job in another area and I've got to pump up my skills on paper to make it sound like the little ones I've done are bigger than ben hur productions :)

Violet....

[Djinn]

9. I agree with the theory VC

and I know why the rules are there, it's just that in some instances my beliefs outweigh rules and laws, if I feel like the public has a right to know then I'd go with bugger the rules as I have in the past.

On this scenario it would have depended what was in the report if I thought it seemed whiewashy I would have forwarded it to his family - defence have a bad habit of covering stuff up. To be honest I'm not convinced it wasn't left there on purpose, why would you need to view it at a public terminal at all? and I just don't think anyone would be that stupid to leave it there. This way the leaver gets to say they were simply stupid - wont be fired, but they got it out there.

As for pumping up your skills just exxagerate wildly, I havn't ever seen a CV which hasn't done that - particularly in comms jobs. I'm actually hoping to be out of the field for good in a few weeks - fingers crossed I'll be working for the union movement soon.

[Violet_Crumble]

10. I heard a few people at work asking the same thing...

Why would anyone use a public terminal to view classified information? And why wasn't the disc encrypted? It's all just a bit strange....

I'll keep my fingers crossed for you that you get the union job. I reckon it'd be heaps more fulfilling than working in the public service :)

Violet...