When the Whistleblower System Routes the Complaint to the Wrong Person

The Super Retail Group case is a masterclass in what not to do — and a warning for every Australian organisation that thinks an internal ethics reporting platform is enough.

In September 2025, Super Retail Group — the ASX-listed retailer behind Supercheap Auto, Rebel Sport, BCF and Macpac — quietly settled a whistleblower case that had been running for 18 months. The settlement terms were confidential. What wasn’t confidential was the damage: a CEO dismissed, a board under fire, and potential litigation costs that the company itself had estimated at between A$30 million and A$50 million.

This wasn’t a story that crept up on them. It was a story that could have ended very differently.

Internal ethics reporting

Two senior executives — Rebecca Farrell, the company’s Chief Legal Officer, and Amelia Berczelly, General Manager of Group Secretariat and Corporate Legal — raised concerns about an undisclosed relationship between CEO Anthony Heraghty and the former Chief Human Resources Officer. They did what employees are supposed to do: they used the company’s internal ethics reporting platform.

What followed was a case study in how not to manage a disclosure.

According to court documents and media reporting, an internal complaint made through the whistleblowing platform was redirected to HR management — which reported directly to the person implicated in the complaint. The whistleblowers’ identities were allegedly disclosed to and discussed with the very CEO they were reporting on, in apparent breach of the Corporations Act. ASIC launched an investigation. The company’s own ASX announcement about the expected litigation was later alleged by the whistleblowers to constitute an act of victimisation. Their employment was ultimately terminated.

By the time the case settled, Heraghty had been dismissed by the board and forfeited incentives worth around A$3.4 million. Governance firm Ownership Matters advised shareholders to vote against re-electing the board chair, citing poor handling of internal culture concerns and lack of transparency. The company’s share price remained more than 7% below where it had been a year prior.

The system failed before anyone picked up the phone

Here is the part that matters most for Australian organisations: the whistleblowers used the internal ethics reporting system they were supposed to. They followed the process. The failure wasn’t that no one spoke up. The failure was structural.

An internal reporting platform that routes sensitive disclosures through the management hierarchy isn’t a whistleblower system. It’s a compliance box-tick with consequences. When the subject of a complaint sits at or near the top of that hierarchy, an internal-only channel doesn’t protect the reporter — it exposes them.

This is not unique to Super Retail. It is a predictable outcome of any reporting architecture that lacks genuine independence. Employees who raise concerns through a system that feeds back into the organisation they’re reporting on are not protected. They are, in effect, identified.

To be clear: an internal reporting system is better than no system at all. Many organisations successfully manage disclosures through well-designed internal channels. The problem isn’t internal reporting — it’s internal reporting without guardrails. When the subject of a complaint has any visibility into the process, the system has already failed.

What independent reporting actually looks like

The distinction between an internal reporting tool and a genuinely independent third-party service matters enormously — legally and practically.

An independent service operates entirely outside the reporting organisation. Reports go to a neutral third party, not to HR, not to management, not to a board that may have conflicts. Anonymity is structurally protected, not just promised in a policy document. There is no pathway by which a disclosure can be routed back to the person it implicates.

Critically, a robust system — whether internal or external — must have clear rules about who is excluded from the process the moment they are implicated. If a disclosure names a senior leader, that person should have zero involvement in communications, case management, or investigation decisions. This isn’t just best practice. Under Australian law, it’s an obligation — and as Super Retail demonstrated, breaching it carries serious consequences.

This is the foundation of EthicsPro® — a secure, independent reporting platform that operates at arm’s length from your organisation by design. When a report is made through EthicsPro®, it doesn’t enter your HR inbox. It enters a managed, confidential case system with no internal access by the parties involved.

The regulatory backdrop is tightening

The Super Retail case didn’t occur in isolation. Australia’s whistleblower framework is under active review, with stage 2 reforms to the Public Interest Disclosure Act in progress and a statutory review of the Corporations Act whistleblower provisions expected to conclude in 2026. ASIC has made clear through its enforcement actions that organisations cannot treat whistleblower policy as a paperwork exercise.

The direction of travel is consistent: regulators expect organisations to have systems that actually work, not systems that merely exist.

Super Retail’s case illustrates the cost of an inadequate system in concrete terms — litigation that stretched nearly two years, executive departures, a collapsing share price, and regulatory scrutiny that continues today. None of that came from having a whistleblower system. It came from having one that wasn’t fit for purpose.

For Australian organisations still relying on internal-only reporting channels, the question isn’t whether something like this could happen. It’s whether your system is designed to prevent it.

Talk to our team today — we’ll walk you through how EthicsPro® works and what a genuinely independent reporting system looks like in practice.

Report It Now™ — Independent reporting. Real protection. reportitnow-global.com/au