The Veterinary Practitioners Registration Board of Victoria (Vetboard Victoria) encourages people to report improper conduct that involves the Board or its employees. The Public Interest Disclosures Act 2012 protects people from deterimental action in reprisal for making a protected disclosure about Vetboard Victoria, Board members, officers or employees. The law aims to ensure openness and accountability by encouraging people to make disclosures and protecting them when they do.
Vetboard Victoria itself is not able to receive protected disclosures. Improper conduct or detrimental action should be reported directly to the Independent Broad-Based Anti‑Corruption Commission (IBAC).
A protected disclosure is a report about the improper conduct of public bodies or public officers that a person can make to the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission or other organisations listed in the Public Interest Disclosures Act 2012.
A protected disclosure can also be made about detrimental action that a public officer or public body takes against a person in reprisal for them (or another person) having made a protected disclosure or cooperated with the investigation of a protected disclosure.
The conduct that is disclosed must be performed as a person's function as a public officer or a body’s function as a public body. There must be a link between the alleged improper conduct and/or detrimental action and the person’s or body’s functions as a public officer or public body.
The public officer or body need not have actually taken the detrimental action, but can just have threatened to take the action. They need not have taken or threatened to take the detrimental action against the person themselves, but can have incited or permitted someone else to take the action.
You can make a protected disclosure about the Veterinary Practitioners Registration Board of Victoria (Vetboard Victoria) or its Board members, officers or employees by contacting the Victorian Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission (IBAC). Vetboard Victoria itself is not able to receive protected disclosures. All protected disclosures must be made to the Independent Broad-Based Anti-Corruption Commission. You can make a protected disclosure in person, by phone (including just by leaving a voicemail message), in writing by email, post or personal delivery, by any other form of electronic communication.
You can make a protected disclosure anonymously.
Vetboard Victoria will take precautions to prevent Board members or employees from taking detrimental action in reprisal for a protected disclosure. Precautions include identifying, assessing, controlling and monitoring potential risks of reprisals faced by persons who make disclosures and witnesses.
A disclosure of detrimental action is itself a protected disclosure and will be assessed by IBAC in accordance with its procedures.