Queensland police say they cannot find records of whistleblower complaints

The Queensland police service says it cannot find records of whistleblower complaints – despite being required by law to keep them – including information relating to a former officer who alleges he was targeted for reprisals.

Last week the former officer, Rick Flori, was told by the state’s information watchdog that police could not provide information relating to “public interest disclosures” he made between 2010 and 2018 because “the information is nonexistent”.

Police had told the office of the information commissioner they did not keep a public interest disclosures register like other government agencies, but instead kept an internal complaints management system.

“Complaints are not classified as [public interest disclosures] through this recording mechanism,” police said.

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“There is no meaningful way of filtering ‘possible [public interest disclosures]’ through the system.”

Agencies are required to keep records of all public interest disclosures, which carry specific protections under Queensland law.

A leading integrity expert at Griffith University, AJ Brown, said it would be “absurd” and “worrisome” if police did not have a system to easily identify and monitor disclosures.

Sources with detailed knowledge of the Queensland public interest disclosure system have questioned whether the police statements were designed to restrict information released to Flori, who is suing the service in relation to alleged reprisals.

The suggestion that police do not keep accurate records of public interest disclosures appears at odds with previous statements. In 2010 the assistant commissioner, Peter Martin, gave information about numbers and types of disclosures.

“The claim is nonsense and the QPS knows it,” Flori said in an email to the commissioner, Katarina Carroll.

Flori has emails and other records that confirm a complaint he made in 2010 was recorded as a public interest disclosure. He also made a number of allegations he says are public interest disclosures up to 2018.

Flori is well known in Queensland as the officer who made public a recording of four colleagues battering an unarmed Gold Coast father in a police station carpark.

None of the officers was charged. Instead police attempted to prosecute Flori for releasing the footage, taken from the basement of the Surfers Paradise police station in 2012.

He was found not guilty of misconduct last year and subsequently launched a civil case, naming the police service and several senior officers as defendants, alleging he had been targeted for reprisals.

The Queensland police service did not respond to a request for comment.

Brown, an expert on whistleblower protections, said government agencies were required to keep proper records of public interest disclosures, even if they had complaints systems.

“It would be rather absurd if the police service did not have these records,” he said.

“It would be strange and worrisome if the police complaint management system did not allow them to identify … matters under the [public interest disclosure] act.

“Unless there’s a system for keeping proper records of a disclosure, there’s no way of knowing that it has been handled properly and that a whistleblower hasn’t ended up suffering reprisals or the investigation has been mismanaged, which are fundamental reasons for the legislation.”