The foolishness of the whistleblower

It seems we don’t know what to make of whistleblowers in Australia. Are they heroes or outlaws? Or both? They inhabit fraught and/or/both territory – they are in a precarious “in-between” space, heroes for exposing corrupt and criminal conduct, and outlaws for doing it in a manner that doesn’t tick all the boxes required for legal protection of whistleblowers under Australian law. As they expose the conduct of others they often expose themselves to the judgment of society-at-large, their actions deemed naïve, reckless or foolish.

Would-be whistleblowers tread a very difficult line, especially when they are dealing with sensitive material linked to issues of national security. The protection that our legal system provides to those who blow the whistle on criminal and corrupt conduct can be patchy.

Indeed, in Australia there is a growing list of high-profile criminal prosecutions against those who blow the whistle. How is it that our legal system can end up determining that whistleblowers are the criminals?

Even where Australian whistleblowers bring situations to light of international importance, they still can face criminal prosecution at home. Ten years ago, “Witness K” blew the whistle on Australia for spying on Timor-Leste during negotiations over oil and gas. The International Court of Justice in the Hague condemned Australia, but Witness K was prosecuted and received a 3-month suspended sentence for leaking the material that exposed Australia. Bernard Collaery, Witness K’s lawyer, was also prosecuted, and only escaped a criminal sentence when the Federal Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus, elected to discontinue proceedings against him in 2022.

The Idealist by Nicholas Jose is a recent Australian novel that deals with the awkward “in-betweenness” forced on whistleblowers. The narrative explores the Catholic faith as a potential site for spiritual and character formation, and a framework for difficult ethical decision-making.

In The Idealist the deep religious faith of the Timor-Leste locals involved in the pro-independence movement becomes an inspiration for Jake, an Australia defence analyst, as he decides his ethical stance and determines who he can trust. In the novel Jake blows the whistle on Australian complicity in the executions of pro-independence activists in Timor-Leste. These executions occurred in real-life, just before the independence referendum for Timor-Leste in 1999.

The centre-piece of the novel is Jake’s attendance at a local mass in Timor-Leste. The deep spirituality of the locals begins to reframe Jake’s political understanding, and eventually his decision to blow the whistle:

The church educated, fed, sheltered and consoled these people. Belief was strong, especially among the young. But did they worship the Virgin and her Son against the world or in the world? Was the church an expression of their identity as East Timorese? Was it an extension of other, deeper beliefs, traditional, animist, the spirits of their land? Every ridge, every stone, every brook and tree had witnessed tremendous suffering, Xanana Gusmão wrote. These were the questions Jake wrestled with.

The novel shows that the locals’ worship practices equip them to be both in the world and against it. Jake looks around at the locals during mass, seeing that “This was their feast day. They were at home. A choir of men and women sang out the old songs of the country that had been given new words, praising God, giving thanks, praying for mercy.” The congregants took the “spiritual food” on offer at this Eucharist feast, the body and blood of Christ given for them. This food and shelter is an important sustenance for the locals, many of whom lead shadowy, in-between lives as freedom fighters in the mountains outside the walls of the church. This sense of home and shelter dissipates as the people follow the priest and the choir outside the Church: they become “like a school of fish, darting, dipping, swerving, as they pushed into the light and immediately sought shelter from the heat in whatever shade they could find.”

The religious practice and faith of the locals helps them to flourish even as they are exposed to the harsh light of political reality, and as they slip between worlds in their campaign for self-determination. An important local institution that is the source of some shelter and “shade” for the pro-independence movement is a refuge for women and girls in the mountains, run by local nun Sister Mina. Jake meets Elisa at the refuge, the wife of a prominent pro-independence figure and the mother of this man’s child. She is at the top of a mountain, “the high place” where the women and girls come to sit:

It was a place of meditation, memory, re-dedication and return created for Sister Mina where each woman, each girl, could bring the pain in her heart and seek release. Elisa was asking for continued strength, she was giving thanks, she was refreshed.

In a scene that is rendered towards the end of the novel, Jake walks alongside Elisa on an ocean shore, and the narration shifts to an elevated, reverential register when Jake notes internally that “the route that brought him to Elisa was not on any chart. It was her cause, it was her in person. For him it was an ascent, an avowal. He was a convert.” For Jake, the strength of character that he sees demonstrated in the locals has the strength of an embodied, incarnational faith. Jake venerates Elisa because of her quiet strength and perseverance through crisis, and the personal price she pays for following what she believes to be right course for her as an East Timorese person. This is a contrast to the Australian position to East Timorese self-determination, which Jake comes to understand as only “a piety or a hypothetical”, but not a deep commitment.

When later Jake finds himself in a difficult diplomatic tangle in America, he looks to find similar evidence of virtue and character when determining whether an American diplomatic acquaintance is a trustworthy handler of sensitive information about the referendum in Timor-Leste. He decides that his American friend is a “person of honour”, who “embodied the old-fashioned virtues, using might for right, helping the weak, aspiring nobly, and the new form of those virtues- human rights, respect, moral courage, the dignity of all.” These old-fashioned virtues are deeply Christian virtues. Jake looks to find someone that he sees embodying these virtues because he believes that these virtues evidence the strength of character required to expose injustice and corruption on an international stage.

In The Idealist a central irony is that Jake’s ethical disposition, and his political and spiritual awakening, seems to lead inexorably to personal tragedy, and to the marshalling by Australian political actors of forces to silence him.

The “in-between-ness” of the whistleblower in The Idealist provides opportunities for individual growth, spiritual rebirth and the making of hard ethical decisions. Is it fair that we expect the real-life whistleblowers who navigate these fraught spaces with good faith, and perhaps with a holy foolishness, to navigate the very real-life possibility of jail – life enclosed within an in-between, abject space?