Whistleblower Rebecca Connor deserves massive respect for what she's done.
She has shown incredible bravery. Those prepared to speak out and blow the whistle on corruption concerns and injustice inside a bureaucracy are few and far between.
Ms Connor was a senior manager in the Department of Planning at Maitland.
She was sacked last year after raising corruption concerns linked to an unlawful mining lease approval. This sacking was a disgraceful decision.
A review was initiated after the Newcastle Herald revealed last year that Ms Connor was sacked because, as she put it, "I wouldn't play ball".
The review, done by Ernst & Young, found the NSW government mining title processes remain exposed to bribery, fraud, theft and corruption risks.
It recommended the department's Division of Resources and Geoscience, which oversees mining applications, should prohibit payment of application fees by cash or cheque "to reduce the risk of fraud, bribery or theft".
The review, which did not include an investigation, did not identify fraud or corruption. However, it did find an "inherent risk of fraud, corruption and conflicts of interest" in the mining titles area.
Ms Connor said the review does validate issues she's been raising since 2016.
But she said it did not address her treatment as a whistleblower. This is disconcerting.
She believed the department was "merely paying lip service to the issues I raised to appease bad media attention".
This is the typical weasel playbook of many bureaucracies who tend to sink into an unhelpful siege mentality when questioned on serious matters. Some, in fact, go into siege mode when questioned on anything that remotely suggests a problem.
These kind of places must be difficult places to work, particularly for staff with any sense of decency, a moral sense of right and wrong and a belief in an honourable and principled public service.
The behaviour of the NSW government in this matter is, so far, extremely poor. The government's actions have done little to change the troubling notion that its close relationship with the mining industry comes at the expense of the rest of the community.
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