Background
Natalie Moses, formerly employed by Hillsong CityCare, alleged that she made protected whistleblower disclosures about Hillsong entities to regulators. She also said she gave material to Andrew Wilkie MP in the expectation that he would publicly release or table it in Parliament, thereby affording her the protection of parliamentary privilege.
Moses alleged that Andrew Leigh MP told Wilkie that she had withdrawn consent for release, and that later communications caused the Australian Labor Party to oppose release. She contended that this delayed publication of her documents until March 2023 and amounted to detrimental conduct prohibited by the Corporations Act whistleblower provisions. The Commonwealth, Leigh and Sue Woodward sought to strike out parts of her amended statement of claim.
The Court’s Holding
Halley J held that communications between parliamentarians about whether documents should be tabled are “proceedings in Parliament” under s 16 of the Parliamentary Privileges Act 1987 (Cth). Tabling is part of the business of a House, and deliberations about whether to table a document are sufficiently connected to that business even if the subject has not previously been before Parliament.
The pleaded claims impermissibly required the Court to draw inferences about parliamentarians’ motives, intentions and conduct from those protected communications. The “bare facts” exception did not assist because Moses relied on the communications to establish causation and states of mind; nor was there a relevant extra-parliamentary repetition or adoption. The Court struck out specified paragraphs, including the core allegations concerning Leigh’s text message and call with Wilkie, but granted leave to file a further amended statement of claim that avoids parliamentary privilege and cures other pleading defects. The balance of the interlocutory application was dismissed.
Key Takeaways
- Parliamentary privilege covers communications by parliamentarians made for, or incidental to, deciding whether to table documents.
- A party cannot bypass s 16 by characterising protected communications as bare historical facts where the claim depends on inferences about motive, intention or causation.
- Strike-out relief for privilege defects need not end the proceeding: a claimant may be allowed to replead on an independent factual basis.
Why It Matters
The decision gives a broad practical application to s 16 of the Parliamentary Privileges Act in civil litigation. It protects not only formal tabling, but also parliamentary deliberations about whether a proposed disclosure should be tabled.
For whistleblower and public-interest litigants, the case underscores the need to separate claims based on independently provable extra-parliamentary conduct from allegations that would require a court to examine protected parliamentary communications.