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Some work places have firing squads that stand in a circle: With no one in charge
Boyle went public with concerns about tax office tactics in 2018 after raising the issue with internally in 2017
Fresh hope for ATO whistleblower as prosecutor reconsiders case
Richard Boyle: The overtaxed whitstleblower
It’s hard to believe this email started a war.
”
From: [redacted]
Sent: Saturday, 20 May 2017 2:31 PM
To: [redacted]
Subject: RE: Overtime for Saturday 20th May
Hi everyone, The last ‘hour of power’ is upon us … That means you still have time to issue another 5 garnishees …. Right? K
Have a great weekend!
[redacted], Early Intervention, Debt, Service Delivery”
Richard Boyle worked for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) for 14 years, until he was sacked. His last job was as a debt collector in the ATO’s Adelaide office, issuing garnishee notices to people with a tax liability. Garnishee notices are one of the most effective tax recovery tools the ATO has. Through a garnishee notice, a bank, for instance, can be directed to transfer funds of a tax liable person to the ATO.
Tax specialists have noted the upsurge in recent years of the ATO issuing these notices to taxpayers on the very same day that it issued tax assessments. When issued, garnishee notices can cause volcanic spews of rage, as depicted in the title and tone of a recent ABC Four Corners program on the ATO, Mongrel Bunch of Bastards: The High Cost of taking on the Tax Office.
In June 2017 ATO management directed staff to upscale the usage of garnishee notices. Richard Boyle saw that as a revenue-raising device that could harm members of the public. He made what he thought was a public interest disclosure, alleging that the directive breached the Australian Public Service code of conduct. His disclosure was peremptorily rejected by the ATO four months later.
Like all whistelblowers, Boyle found himself in an asymmetrical power relationship. He came to the gunfight with the ATO bearing a plastic fork.
Jobn Hatton Helping Teachers to get Rid of Few Ruthless Bullying Executives
Six Minutes to Midnight Review: A Finishing School for the girls Nazi Elite
Parliamentary staffers demand change to rules that allow toxic environment to fester
Cutthroat and profane, this toxic hothouse exposes our workplace pressures
The AFP clearing-house: more political than useful
Some of the AFP commissioners have entrenched the AFP’s reputation as the most politicised force in the country. When one considers the NSW and Victoria Police, that is really saying something....
The sporadic leaks to the dark web have continued in the past few days and it’s understood the files totalled some 250 gigabytes as of Wednesday.
And as the scale of the hack, which occured in December 2020, becomes clearer, questions are emerging about whether a NSW ministry failed to immediately alert the state’s cyber investigations team about what had happened.
NSW Police said in a statement its joint investigation with Cyber Security NSW, dubbed Strike Force Martine, didn’t begin until February, at least six weeks after the US company Accellion said it first communicated to customers in relation to the hack which impacted NSW Health and Transport for NSW among dozens of global victims.
The hack targeted Accellion and its product File Transfer Appliance, a system used by companies and government agencies worldwide to transmit data.
Brett Callow, threat analyst with the cyber security firm Emsisoft, said the ransomware group Clop had uploaded samples of NSW Transport documents claimed to have been stolen in the Accellion hack, including government tenders and steering committee papers.
