ACT Public Sector Whistleblower Protection: Public Interest Disclosure Act 2012

The Public Interest Disclosure Act 2012 (ACT) protects ACT public sector and Legislative Assembly employees, contractors and volunteers who disclose maladministration or a substantial danger to public health, safety or the environment.

This page covers whistleblower protection for people who work in the ACT public sector under the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2012 (ACT). It does not cover Commonwealth public servants or private-sector employees, who are protected under different Acts.

The Act and Who It Covers

The Public Interest Disclosure Act 2012 (ACT) is still the current, operative Act. Its most recent republication, Republication No. 7, took effect 4 March 2021, following substantive amendment by the Public Interest Disclosure Amendment Act 2020 (A2020-46). That amendment rewrote large parts of the Act to substitute the newer Integrity Commissioner role, created in 2018, in place of an older commissioner role, and to build the Integrity Commissioner into the disclosure and investigation pathway alongside the pre-existing Ombudsman role. There is no repeal notice anywhere in the current text, and no amendment has been made since the March 2021 republication.

This matters because the ACT's pattern is the opposite of what happened in some other jurisdictions around the same period. The Northern Territory's separate whistleblower Act was repealed outright and folded into that territory's anti-corruption legislation. The ACT did the reverse: it kept its Public Interest Disclosure Act as the operative statute and instead amended it to route disclosures through its newer integrity body. A reader should not assume the ACT followed the Northern Territory's pattern just because both jurisdictions set up an anti-corruption or integrity body around a similar time.

The Act covers a "public sector entity," meaning an ACTPS entity such as the public service, a territory authority or corporation, or a statutory office holder, as well as a Legislative Assembly entity such as an MLA's office or the Office of the Legislative Assembly. A "public official" under the Act includes a current or former employee of a public sector entity, and also a contractor, a contractor's employee, or a volunteer who exercises a function of that entity.

What You Can Disclose

Section 8 defines disclosable conduct as an action, policy, practice or procedure of a public sector entity or its public official that amounts to maladministration, meaning substantial mismanagement of public resources or funds, or substantial mismanagement in performing official functions, or that results in a substantial and specific danger to public health or safety, or to the environment.

The Act expressly excludes personal work-related grievances, such as interpersonal conflict, leave decisions, or employment, transfer, promotion or discipline decisions affecting the discloser, and also excludes disagreement with a Territory policy about the amount, purpose or priority of public expenditure.

Who Receives a Disclosure

Section 11 lists the "disclosure officers" a person can approach. For a matter concerning an ACTPS entity, these are the public sector standards commissioner, the head of service, the auditor-general, the ombudsman, the integrity commissioner, the head of the entity itself, or a person the entity head has nominated. For a matter concerning a Legislative Assembly entity, the equivalent list is the Clerk of the Legislative Assembly, the auditor-general, the ombudsman, the integrity commissioner, or a nominated person. Every public sector entity head must nominate at least one disclosure officer, publish their contact details, and give those details to the Integrity Commissioner, who must also publish them.

The Integrity Commissioner sits at the centre of the process. On receiving a disclosure, or becoming aware of one, the Integrity Commissioner must assess it and decide whether to investigate it directly or refer it to another entity. A referred disclosure still flows back to the Integrity Commissioner for oversight of how it is handled.

Protections

A discloser who makes a public interest disclosure does not commit a breach of confidence, a breach of professional etiquette or ethics, a breach of a professional conduct rule, or, for a disclosure about an MLA, a contempt of the Assembly. They incur no civil or criminal liability for making the disclosure, and, if a public official, cannot be subjected to administrative or disciplinary action or dismissal only because they made the disclosure. The Act also gives a discloser absolute privilege against a defamation action arising from the disclosure.

Protection can be lost. A court can find that a discloser forfeits protection if they knowingly gave false or misleading information to an investigator, or if the disclosure, or part of it, was vexatious, although a court can override this where the false or misleading conduct was minor and did not materially prejudice the investigation. Making a disclosure about your own conduct also does not erase your own civil, criminal or administrative liability for that conduct.

Officials who handle disclosures are separately protected: the Integrity Commissioner, the Ombudsman, disclosure officers and investigating entities are not personally civilly liable for honest, non-reckless acts or omissions in exercising a function under the Act, with any liability instead attaching to the Territory.

The Reprisal Offence and Its Penalty

Section 39 defines "detrimental action" as discriminating against a person in a way that affects their reputation, career, profession, employment or trade, harassing or intimidating them, injuring them, or damaging their property.

Section 40 makes it an offence to take detrimental action against a person because of a public interest disclosure, including because of a belief that someone has made, or intends to make, one. It is enough that the disclosure was a contributing reason for the detrimental action; it does not need to be the only reason. The maximum penalty is 100 penalty units, 1 year's imprisonment, or both.

The current ACT penalty unit is $160 for an individual and $810 for a corporation, set under the Legislation Act 2001 (ACT), as confirmed from the current Republication No. 126, effective 23 February 2026. That puts the maximum section 40 fine at $16,000 for an individual, or up to $81,000 for a corporation. Notably, the individual penalty unit value of $160 has held continuously since at least the Act's March 2021 republication through the current 2026 republication, a genuinely stable figure over roughly five years rather than an assumption that nothing has changed.

Confidentiality of Your Identity

Section 44 makes it an offence to use, or to divulge, "protected information" about a person while reckless as to its protected status. Protected information is information about a person that was disclosed to, or obtained by, a covered person because of exercising a function under the Act. The offence applies to anyone who is, or has been, the Integrity Commissioner, the Ombudsman, a disclosure officer, an investigating entity, or anyone else who has exercised a function under the Act. The maximum penalty is 50 penalty units, 6 months' imprisonment, or both, which is $8,000 for an individual at the current penalty unit value.

Defences exist for exercising a function under this Act or another territory law, for court proceedings, and where the subject of the information has consented. A covered person is also not required to divulge protected information to a court unless it is necessary under this Act or another ACT law.

Oversight: Two Bodies With Different Roles

Oversight in the ACT is split between two bodies with genuinely different roles, rather than one regulator handling everything. The Integrity Commissioner is the primary investigator and triage point, deciding whether to investigate a disclosure directly or refer it elsewhere, publishing disclosure officer contact details, and issuing guidelines and procedures for how disclosures are handled.

The ACT Ombudsman plays two distinct roles. First, the Ombudsman is one of the disclosure officers a person can approach directly with a disclosure. Second, and separately, the Ombudsman holds a dedicated oversight and complaints role: a person can complain to the Ombudsman about how an entity head, the head of service, or the public sector standards commissioner handled a disclosure, including whether Integrity Commissioner guidelines and procedures were followed. In that role the Ombudsman can give advice, monitor how disclosures are managed across the public sector, review how a specific disclosure was handled, and act to prevent or remedy detrimental action against a discloser or a witness. The Ombudsman's separate, general powers under the Ombudsman Act 1989 (ACT) are preserved alongside this specific role.

If You Work for the Commonwealth or in the Private Sector

This page covers ACT public sector and Legislative Assembly employees only. If you work for the Commonwealth government rather than the ACT government, whistleblower protection instead comes from the Public Interest Disclosure Act 2013 (Cth) and the National Anti-Corruption Commission Act 2022 (Cth); see the separate page on Commonwealth public interest disclosure protections. If you work in the private sector, see the separate page on corporate whistleblower protections. For a comparison of reprisal penalties across every state and territory, see the whistleblower protection overview. For the wider picture of workplace rights in the territory and beyond, return to the Australia employment law hub.