Culture

Freya Newman’s Not Going To Jail For Blowing The Whistle On Frances Abbott’s Dodgy Scholarship

Common sense has prevailed.

by Meg Watson  25 November 2014

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Despite pleading guilty to accessing restricted documents from the Whitehouse Institute of Design, 21-year-old uni student Freya Newman has not been charged with any criminal convictions in a sentencing hearing in Sydney this morning. Though the maximum sentence for the offence — breaching 308(H) of the Crimes Act — is two years jail time, she was instead sentenced to a two-year good behaviour bond and spared from having a criminal record.

Common sense has prevailed.

For those not up to speed in this whole epic debacle, Freya Newman was the UTS student and part-time Whitehouse librarian who leaked the details of Frances Abbott’s secret design “managing director’s scholarship”  to New Matilda. Using another staff member’s login details, she found documents recording the Prime Minster’s daughter receiving an unadvertised scholarship after just one interview. Abbott completed her $68,182 degree for just $7,546 and the scholarship was never recorded on her father’s register of interests.

Basically, Newman did a good thing for the right reasons. Get some more background here.

Because of this, there were a lot of things that worked in her favour in court. For one, she wasn’t motivated by self-interest or profit — she was doing something she felt was in the public good. Though her actions weren’t covered by the immunities generally given to whistleblowers, they damn well should have been. Newman’s documents exposing Frances Abbott’s favour and privilege were published the same goddamned week Tony Abbott announced a crippling blow to the country’s higher education system. Though it may not have made a huge difference to the families who may not be able to send their children to university in the future, they definitely had a right to know.

More than that, she didn’t even realise it was illegal. Even her lawyer stated that, despite all his experience, he too had not been aware the act was a criminal offence. Newman pleaded guilty to the offence at the earliest possible date and even wrote a letter of apology to Frances Abbott herself. Though the letter was not met with much love from Abbott herself — “To be honest, it’s just like as a small child you learn it’s not right to read someone’s diary,” she replied — it was taken as a sign of contrition.

No, this hasn’t stopped privileged people like Frances Abbott scoring freebies. No, the higher education system isn’t any safer from being crushed by the ham-fisted might of our beloved government. But this decision has stopped a well-meaning and brave young woman from being tossed in prison. So, it’s not a bad first step.

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For more: ‘Junk Explained: Freya Newman And Why We Need Whistleblowers‘

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Photo via Sarah McVeigh/Triple J Hack.