Whistleblowers in private higher education institutions, such as Freya Newman, would be able to argue their disclosures were in the public interest and potentially escape prosecution under a bill being prepared by the Greens.

Newman, a former librarian at the Whitehouse Institute of Design, accessed student records showing Tony Abbott’s daughter Frances Abbott had received an unadvertised $60,000 scholarship.

Newman was placed on a two-year good behaviour bond this month after pleading guilty in September to one count of unauthorised access to restricted data.

She was not able to argue the disclosure was in the public interest because Whitehouse is a private institution and falls outside public-service whistleblower protections.

The Greens senator Lee Rhiannon said recent events in the higher education sector highlighted inadequacies in the whistleblower protection regime.

She said: “Private education companies receive billions of dollars in public funding, and if the federal government has its way they would receive hundreds of millions more, yet they are exempt from current whistleblower protections.”

Legal experts such as AJ Brown, a professor of public policy and law at Griffith University, have said the protection for private sector workers is inadequate and a “major limit” to Australia’s disclosure regime.

Corporate whistleblowers are immune from prosecution only if they report alleged wrongdoing to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (Asic) or certain staff within their company – but not if they take their concerns to the media.

Asic has warned these laws do not guarantee a whistleblower’s anonymity, nor do they allow the watchdog to commence court proceedings on a whistleblower’s behalf.

A recent report by Transparency International (pdf) examining whistleblower laws in G20 countries found Australia’s private-sector protections were weaker than those in China, the US, the UK, Korea, South Africa, Japan, Germany and France.

Rhiannon said the Greens bill would guarantee anonymity and immunity to genuine whistleblowers in private higher education institutions “as a first step in enhancing our national whistleblower regime”.