Police have called for a conviction to be recorded against a 21-year-old whistleblower who pleaded guilty to accessing restricted records revealing the prime minister’s daughter, Frances Abbott, received an undisclosed $60,000 scholarship.

The whistleblower, Freya Newman, appeared in Sydney’s Downing Centre on Thursday and will now be sentenced on 25 November.

Newman, a former part-time librarian at the Whitehouse School of Design in Sydney, was charged in August with accessing a student database revealing the prize. Last month she pleaded guilty to one count of unauthorised access to restricted data. The offence carries a sentence of up to two years in prison.

Newman, a creative writing and cultural studies student, was greeted inside court by more than a dozen supporters. Outside, a gaggle of protesters waved placards reading “Protect whistleblowers”.

More than 80 people packed the small courtroom to hear the young woman’s sentence. Lawyers stood in the aisles and journalists lined the walls of the room. Newman, forced to share a chair with her mother, sat quietly in the second row with her arms folded.

Tony Abbott with his daughter Frances. Photograph: DAVID GRAY/REUTERS

Her barrister, Anthony Payne SC, told the court that Newman accepted that she had “breached her employer’s trust”, but argued that her conduct was at “the lower end of seriousness”.

Payne said “no harm” had befallen Frances Abbott as a result of the breach and that the information Newman accessed was not commercially sensitive.

He said Newman was motivated by a “sense of injustice” and her “political and social justice beliefs”, rather than a desire to achieve fame or notoriety. She had made no attempt to hide her conduct, apologised in writing to Frances Abbott for any distress, and resigned from Whitehouse immediately after the story broke, he said.

“She sincerely believed she was acting in the public interest. She was not aware she was committing an offence,” he said. “Nor that her actions would become front page news across Australia.”

“She has significant remorse,” he said, arguing that her “relative immaturity” should be taken into account.

“Other more senior employees at the institute had reinforced her sense of injustice ... Her relative immaturity mitigates the seriousness of her offending,” Payne said.

Payne said the “astounding media interest” in the case meant that “all future employers and educational institutions will know Freya as a whistleblower”, giving the “vulnerable” young woman a public notoriety that would affect her employment prospects.

A police prosecutor agreed the offence was on the trivial end of the scale but said a conviction should still be recorded against Newman because her conduct “was a crime”.

He argued it was essential that the case be seen as a deterrent. “The only way courts can deliver that message is by recording a conviction against Ms Newman,” the prosecutor said.

Magistrate Teresa O’Sullivan held sentencing over until 25 November.

Well-wishers approached Newman in the courtroom after the submissions. One man whispered: “You’re a hero, you’ll always be a hero.”

“You’re a very brave young lady,” another said.

She left the courtroom surrounded by a scrum of cameras alongside her legal team and family, making no comment.



It was revealed in May that Frances Abbott had attended the design school on a “managing director’s scholarship” at the recommendation of the college’s chairman and Liberal party donor, Les Taylor.

Abbott was only the second recipient of the prize, which was not advertised to other students. Whitehouse has declined to detail the application process and criteria for awarding the scholarship.

According to its website, Whitehouse “does not currently offer scholarships to gain a place”, but the college has maintained it offers a variety of scholarships and all “are discretionary and awarded on merit”.

Police said that on 20 May, Newman used the login details of another staff member without her knowledge to access the college’s student records.

According to emails she subsequently sent other staff members, the records she found indicated “Frances meeting with Leanne [Whitehouse] the CEO of Whitehouse Institute on Feb 21 2011 and then receiving managing director scholarship for 2011 three days later”.

Newman accessed the database in order to “pass this information onto the media”, the police statement said.

She was not able to argue that the disclosure was in the public interest as Whitehouse is a private institution and falls outside public-service whistleblower protections. Legal experts such as AJ Brown, a board member of Transparency International, have identified this as a “major limit” in Australia’s disclosure regime.

“This is a case where it’s at least arguable that there was a public interest in knowing what the relationship was between the college, the prime minister and the Liberal party,” Brown has told Guardian Australia.

Abbott has denied he should have disclosed the scholarship on his parliamentary register of interests, arguing the scholarship was granted on merit and therefore did not need to be declared as a gift.

An online petition to “stop the pursuit” of Newman has attracted more than 11,000 supporters.