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Four years ago, Home Affairs assistant secretary Derek Elias attempted to report corruption in offshore contracts – the department’s response has left him mentally unwell and in financial turmoil. By Nick Feik.

Life as a Home Affairs whistleblower: ‘I’m just falling over’

Department of Home Affairs whistleblower Derek Elias.

Credit: Paul Harris / The Age

On the phone, Derek Elias is distressed. “I just can’t handle it anymore,” he says. “I’m trying to report crimes – what else am I supposed to do?”

Elias is still technically employed by the Department of Home Affairs, but he hasn’t worked full-time since July 2021, when he walked out on his role in Operation Sovereign Borders following what he describes as “a significant probity breach” involving lucrative Home Affairs contracts in Nauru.

His job was to administer offshore detention contracts worth billions, and it wasn’t the first time he’d raised concerns. “The renewal of broken contracts was a licence to print money for contractors,” he says, “and this seemed of little concern to the political ambitions and careers of the most senior staff at Home Affairs.”

Elias has spent years privately trying to engage Home Affairs and other agencies, including the National Anti-Corruption Commission, to address issues of probity and accountability and the department’s treatment of him, but to no avail. The mental stress has left him unable to work full-time, uninsured, unrepresented and on the verge of losing his family home. His only remaining option, as he sees it, is to speak out.

Elias was appointed assistant secretary for regional processing contracts in December 2019, having worked in different roles at Home Affairs since August the previous year. He quickly learnt that it was standard department practice to avoid tender processes by extending existing contracts. It was easier, faster, politically uncomplicated and would align them with existing national security priorities and arrangements.

A tender process for new contracts can take years, and neither the department nor the then Coalition government wanted to do anything that would “risk” having to return asylum seekers to Australia in the interim.

By early 2020 the numbers of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island were only a fraction of what they had once been, so service requirements had changed radically, but contractors bluntly refused to alter the basic terms of the existing arrangements. They knew they had Home Affairs over a barrel, and that the only way Home Affairs could ensure asylum seekers remained offshore was to extend the existing contracts.

The Australian taxpayer would be paying for things that no longer existed and services no longer required, but because Home Affairs had acquiesced to the government’s “no returns” policy, regardless of the cost, the department had little leverage in contract negotiations.

The Nine newspapers recently reported on payments that included multimillion-dollar insurance premiums for art, a luxury car and a yacht. Studying one particular contract, Elias realised Home Affairs hadn’t completed the negotiations on the fee schedule even as it was being implemented. In that contract alone, he identified up to $6 million in questionable payments. “All of the contracts had different problems with them,” he says.

As a relative newcomer to the department, Elias raised his queries and objections: Why are we paying this? Where’s this paperwork? He says the most common answer was “Don’t ask.”

Elias says his colleagues and superiors would be alarmed by his questions, fearful of the consequences of upsetting the government. They would “stare at you like you had three fucking heads,” he says.

The other response was, “What are you going to do about it?” When it became evident that he thought it appropriate to report his concerns, he was on his own. At this stage, he was exhausted from working long days and late hours, turning around hundreds of pages of documents he had no chance of scrutinising effectively. He says he did so in order to get the contract extensions on track – “otherwise it was my neck”.

Elias developed insomnia and symptoms of social withdrawal. He started smoking again and drinking heavily. Eventually he took leave on grounds of ill health.

His first statement to Comcare, the agency that administers government employees’ insurance claims, compensation and workplace health and safety, attested that his medical illness was related to concerns about the toxic workplace culture at Home Affairs and issues of probity, accountability and questionable business practices in contract management. There was an irreconcilable tension between the transparency and responsibility that was the official objective of his role and the work he was being asked to complete.

His unhappy experience at Home Affairs was not unusual. In 2024, and in several previous years, Home Affairs was branded the worst Commonwealth public service department in which to work, according to the APS census. It received the highest number of workers’ compensation claims and also shared top position for the most bullying, harassment and discrimination complaints.

Elias’s Comcare statement went to the department, which disputed its claims and blamed his ill health on alleged pre-existing conditions. The department also alleged he was bitter at not getting a promotion.

Elias was in charge of administering billions of dollars of government contracts, and was raising alarms about the working conditions but, instead of following up his allegations, Home Affairs threw all its efforts into discrediting him.

At an Administrative Appeals Tribunal hearing about his compensation in 2023, Elias alleged that “a decision had been taken [by Home Affairs] to take basically my whole team’s eyes off contract delivery. I found this to be both extraordinary and very stressful … My team was effectively blinded from being able to manage the money that we were entrusted to actually manage.”

His allegations were strenuously denied by Home Affairs, which also mounted counterclaims about his reliability as a witness. In his evidence to the hearing, Elias became the most senior departmental official to detail serious concerns about Australia’s Pacific Solution regime.

The process of presenting contemporary medical evidence for compensation purposes, which continues today, has been long and traumatic for Elias, and has exacerbated his ill health.

His Comcare case has now dragged on for years. Representing himself for reasons of both cost and complexity, Elias believes the years of lawfare waged against his claims are due to the risk he posed and questions he raised. He says he has been “vilified for raising legitimate concerns regarding the expenditure of public monies and for sustaining a mental injury at work”.

Elias says he asked – “begged” – to brief the secretary of the department, Stephanie Foster, on his concerns but was ignored.

He has repeatedly raised his concerns with the Commonwealth Ombudsman, the Attorney-General’s Department, various ministers, Comcare, the Australian Government Solicitor, the NACC, the Merit Protection Commissioner and the Australian National Audit Office.

He also contacted the Australian Human Rights Commission and assisted the Australian Federal Police in Operation Integra, which was investigating contractors defrauding the Commonwealth. With the exception of the latter two organisations, he says, “I have met with stout refusal to engage across the board.”

For Elias, who has a PhD in anthropology and had a long and successful career prior to Home Affairs, the entire experience has been bewildering and exasperating. Nothing in his overseas postings as a United Nations diplomat and representative, or at UNESCO or the UN Office for Sustainable Development, prepared him for what he would experience at Home Affairs.

In conversation, he is funny, self-aware and intelligent, albeit clearly affected by the events of his recent life. He often presents as under siege, highly stressed and overwhelmed by the challenges facing him.

Elias has had virtually no income for almost two years and is not yet fit to return to full-time work. Many hours are taken up each day with the correspondence and conversations required by his ongoing legal affairs.

Furthermore, he says, “I have no prospects for future work given my long absence and the public destruction of my reputation. I am facing foreclosure of the family home. I continue to borrow money from friends to survive.”

Elias says he is using his superannuation, released on compassionate grounds, to pay for ongoing medical assessments. “I no longer have the funds to support consultations with my treating psychologist and psychiatrist. I have sold the family car. My family no longer has health insurance and I have been declined health insurance even if I return to work.”

Meanwhile, Home Affairs and Comcare have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars either attacking his health or defending their own decisions regarding his compensation claims. “The squandering of public monies for political reputation or protecting APS careers is quite frankly obscene,” Elias says.

Like many whistleblowers, Elias says he never sought to be a whistleblower. He believes he was just trying to do his job properly. Also, like many whistleblowers, he has paid a heavy price. In fact, he says, he only recently decided to speak publicly out of desperation, as a last resort, having seen all other avenues closed to him. While the risks of speaking out are also enormous, he believes he has little left to lose.

“I’m at the end of the road,” he says.

What he wants now is not about compensation. It’s about some degree of acknowledgement and moral redress. This is necessary for his welfare and to enable him to provide for his family.

“I’m just falling over,” he says. “Because I keep repeating the same story over and over, which is why I don’t get better mentally. The only way I can possibly get better is by somebody doing something about these things, otherwise they’ll be in my head forever. And I can’t live with them in my head forever.”

He says he “could have got rid of this stuff four years ago” if those responsible had acknowledged his concerns and looked into his allegations.

Instead, it was “attack, attack, attack”.

Despite the growing number of allegations involving massive corruption in Australia’s offshore detention regime, there are still few signs that the government or any of its authorities will seriously investigate them.

There is every chance they never will. Instead, the cost will continue to be borne by taxpayers, asylum seekers and whistleblowers.

Home Affairs declined to give specific responses to questions about Derek Elias and his allegations. A spokesperson said: “The Department’s contract management frameworks across regional processing operations have significantly matured over the past decade. Service providers are selected through a rigorous procurement process with multiple layers of due diligence and governance.

“Strong border protection policies require commitment and investment. In assessing value for money, the Department considers not just price but also service quality, delivery complexity and the criticality of arrangements.”

They added: “A review of integrity and governance in the administration of regional processing arrangements, conducted by Dennis Richardson AC in 2023, did not identify any deliberate wrongdoing or criminality. The Review did not refer any individual to the Australian Federal Police or National Anti-Corruption Commission.”

This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on November 15, 2025 as "Life as a Home Affairs whistleblower: ‘I’m just falling over’".

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