Department of Planning secretary Carolyn McNally. In a message to staff Ms McNally acknowledged “some of the allegations impact on the public’s confidence in the work of the department” and that “the best way to maintain confidence is to ensure a full investigation of matters raised". Ms McNally told staff that “most of these issues related to matters going back a number of years”. The third whistleblower – who declined to be named – has detailed an extraordinary set of fresh allegations to the Herald amid concerns the review will only examine the resources and geoscience division. He warned the review would not be broad enough to address a toxic culture that had corroded other parts of the department and sparked an internal revolt among senior executives.

The Department of Planning returned fire in response. “We do not agree with this statement and its sentiment,” a spokesperson said. The spokesperson denied the employee’s dismissal was connected to the matters he had escalated but declined to say why he was sacked. The chief risk officer has represented Australia on international panels on risk management. A fortnight before his termination, he was honoured with a “highly commended” for risk leadership at a conference run by icare, the state insurer. “I believe this was embarrassing for the department as they had removed me from the chief risk officer position,” he said.

He was also scathing of an email circulated to department staff in the wake of the recent publicity, encouraging would-be whistleblowers to raise their issues with management. “Anybody who has sought to raise issues has been ejected from the department,” he said. “How does that give confidence to whistleblowers?” 'I have no visibility' In mid-2017, an auditor was combing through St Vincent de Paul Society’s books when they spotted something amiss in the charity’s Upper Hunter office. Under the state government’s $16 million Energy Accounts Payment Assistance Scheme (EAPA), charities and non-government organisations have a supply of $50 vouchers, intended to be handed out as lifelines to families struggling to pay their energy bills.

The St Vincent de Paul auditor raised the alarm after discovering that volunteers in the Murrurundi office had issued over $7000 worth of the EAPA vouchers to themselves or family members. Loading The charity alerted the Department of Planning to the fraud. The department’s chief risk officer was immediately concerned at the potential for wider rorting of the public purse. “In my opinion, it pointed to systemic weaknesses with the program,” he said. “Audits by their nature only take a sample – so it could have been larger than that in St Vincent's, we don’t know. But the department’s systems didn't prevent it.” The energy division did not have its own investigative unit, so the chief risk officer suggested a review by a professional standards team that specialised in fact-finding investigations.

The team – which worked out of the resources area but offered its services to the entire department – was happy to oblige. But the deputy secretary for energy, Dr Liz Develin, baulked at using the professional standards team, which fell outside of her control. “I have no visibility of what the professional standards team does, and I was just conscious that I had approached what I saw as the department’s governance team – not a team which was within [resources],” Dr Develin wrote in an email reply seen by the Herald. That reply was missing when the entire email chain was later released to a member of the public in response to a freedom of information request. The Department did not respond when asked for an explanation over the missing email. The freedom of information request was also initially denied on the basis that processing it would require "an unreasonable and substantial diversion of the department's resources", but the decision was reversed after a vehement complaint from the member of the public.

Dr Develin ultimately opted to use an external contractor, Deloitte, to perform the review, at a cost of $214,000. A member of the professional standards team at the time, who did not wish to be named, said her unit had form for “unearthing problems and referring things to ICAC”. The woman, whose position was later abolished, argued the department had a duty to make proper use of taxpayers’ money. “Having available expertise in-house and refusing to use them in favour of spending upwards of $200,000 on consultants shows a lack of respect for the taxpayer, in my opinion,” she said. “We were already on the payroll and we were underutilised … why would the department be so concerned that the investigator was independent from the area being reviewed?” Within a month, the chief risk officer was stood down from his role. He believes the dispute “substantially” contributed to the department’s decision.

A departmental spokesperson rejected that version of events, saying the professional standards team was part of resources and had “no role” across the department. “Dr Develin did not know what the remit of the professional standards team was as it was in another division of the department [which was] also located in an office outside of Sydney,” the spokesperson said, adding that resources had only been moved into the Department of Planning about six months earlier. The professional standards team was later disbanded entirely and its employees re-assigned to the governance branch of the Department of Planning. “These employees are utilised, when needed, to assess, manage and inquire into complaint matters,” the spokesperson said. “Where complaints involve allegations that may amount to possible fraud or corruption these are notified to ICAC.” The department’s former chief risk officer says he warned against the use of PFAS. Credit:United Firefighters Union

Fresh starts and foam fears The chief risk officer was posted to a new role as the department’s director of financial stewardship and accountability. With the new position also came new working quarters: he was asked to work three days a week in Parramatta, one day a week in the Sydney CBD and one day on the Central Coast. He took issue with the “flexible working perspective”, arguing it was unreasonable to expect him to make the lengthy commute between the three far-flung destinations and his home. Several months into the new role, the Environment Protection Authority contacted the Department of Planning, inquiring about its stocks of toxic firefighting foams containing per- and poly-fluoroalkyl chemicals [PFAS].

Because there were fears there could be some financial liability involved, the matter was referred to the whistleblower in his new role as director of financial stewardship. It wasn’t the first he’d heard of the topic – when working in corporate risk for Fire and Rescue NSW it was suggested its PFAS-based foam be replaced with a newer type of foam, which also contained the PFAS chemicals. The director intervened, knocking back the foam because it contained the toxins. “I rejected this foam for a range of reasons,” he said. “The fact that it [PFAS] was coming through in breast milk of feeding mothers in Germany, I just went nup, that’s food chain contamination. We knew it was toxic. By how much? I’m not prepared to throw that dice because the impacts are substantial.” As he pursued his fresh inquiries, the director said he was alarmed to discover that the foams had allegedly been used by the NSW Parks and Wildlife Service. He said he sought to find out how much foam the service had and in what circumstances it had been used. “You can imagine how embarrassing it would be, for the department that’s charged with managing the environment in the state, to have used this foam or a variant of it,” he said. “Because the national parks … generally are part of the catchment areas for all of the water supplies.”

He also raised the potential contamination of Lord Howe Island, due to its airport, and land owned by other state agencies with his superiors. Within a fortnight, the director was terminated under Section 41 and prevented from accessing his work emails. The former Planning employee feared contamination of Lord Howe Island before his employment was terminated. “I was shocked,” he said. A departmental spokesperson said it did not comment on former employees, but denied the man’s termination was related to the PFAS issue.

“We understand that this matter has been actively managed by the EPA and Office of Environment and Heritage since 2016 and the former employee left the Department of Planning in 2018,” he said. A spokesperson for the Office of Environment and Heritage added that it had conducted a review of the historical use and current possession of firefighting foams that may have contained PFAS in June last year. "The results showed minimal use of the product and where there was anecdotal use, the EPA carried out site sampling ... sampling resulted in no PFAS detected in the environment," he said. "Any known PFAS-containing foam products have been disposed of appropriately." But the whistleblower alleged his inquiries - relating to broader contamination than NSW parks alone - created waves because he was not approaching it in a manner that attempted to limit bad PR.

“There hadn’t been enough work undertaken to make any sort of educated determination as to the extent of their [the state's] liability,” he said. “Whether you have a legal liability, you have a moral and ethical responsibility to investigate what kind of contamination you may have inflicted on the environment as a result of your operations.”