Under our commonwealth, our federal regime now, under the law partly as it is but also partly as it is likely to be after the next wave of reform goes through, if there has basically been a duty to protect and support but there has been a failure, in that duty and damage has occurred, under normal principles of tort law, for example, they would be entitled to go either to the Fair Work Commission regime, our equivalent of a national employment relations tribunal, which is a lower-cost jurisdiction, or they could go to the federal court directly, straight to a court of law. They couldn't do both, but they could do one or the other and seek their damages, which are uncapped for the federal court here, as they are in the U.K. employment relations tribunal, in recognition that even quite small breaches can lead to enormous damage. Small breaches or small failures in duty to protect and support can lead to the destruction of an entire career. The caps on damages that are in your legislation currently strike me as fairly farcical.
In addition to that, there's a huge problem of legal support and legal costs. In our legislation now, there is a trend towards the public interest costs rule that means a whistle-blower is automatically indemnified against the risk of paying the government's costs or the respondent's costs unless it's vexatious or an abuse of process. However, even then, they still have to come up with their own costs. That's a huge challenge that needs to be directly addressed.
The Queensland state regime, which was recently reviewed, is also recommending an additional administrative remedy that means the oversight agency could either require or force the employing agency to basically step in and mediate and conciliate and come up with an administrative remedy before there's any need to take action in any of those tribunals, simply to—