I'm not sure how you embed it in legislation, but one thing that we know is crucial to making a good whistle-blowing system work in an organization is having the organization use its own history to get a positive message out within the organization about how real cases have been handled, using appropriate cases.
That approach seems crucial to their success. It's not so much public recognition as recognition within the organization, in a demonstration by the organization not only that it promises to protect people but is using its own case history to illustrate how it handles things in that organization. Few things can be more powerful than that. It's a form of recognition, but it's not focused on the individual. It's focused on the benefit of what the individual has done for the organization and for the public interest by being prepared to speak up. Also, it demonstrates that the organization has the capacity to deal with it well.
As for public recognition, I think attitudes are changing towards whistle-blowing. I think there's a much broader understanding of the public benefit of whistle-blowing and that whistle-blowers come in all shapes and sizes, but that very few are intending to ever become public figures, let alone martyrs, in the process.
I think, then, that it's really helpful when the government and the Parliament and the Integrity Commissioner can find ways of using those cases to demonstrate to people why whistle-blowing is important, and why it's valued, more importantly.
As for rewards and awards, we've had a great case in Australia in which one of our public health system whistle-blowers was the local hero and received a local hero award on our national Australia Day—the Australian of the Year award, which is very high-profile; it's a great honour. That type of recognition is not specific to whistle-blowing at that level, amongst the other health people, people finding cancer cures and other things. To have that whistle-blowing function recognized in that way was very powerful.