Matilda Bawden

Matilda is a Forensic Social Worker with 30 years experience specialising in complex and compounding psychosocial barriers; including child protection, homelessness, poverty and disabilities. Matilda is a Former National Secretary of Whistleblowers Australia who has been a tireless champion of social justice causes and has dedicated her life to ensuring integrity and transparency in public office and public sector accountability.

Matilda has featured in local, national and international news media for her passionate work in defending the human rights of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised members of society and was featured in the SBS Insight program (“Bullies at Work”), exposing corruption at the highest levels of government, including courtrooms in the form of the “Scheme Critical List”.

In 2010, Matilda carried out extensive research into the NCA bombing; consolidating known facts in the case. This research was referred to the Office of Prime Minister by a member of the Legislative Council seeking a Royal Commission inquiry into those findings.

By 2012, Matilda assisted a mining company Director to secure two major legal victories worth multi-millions, before the NSW & South Australian Supreme Courts, by conducting Discovery & providing instruction to his legal counsel on the conduct of the NSW case. This was won on her instruction to have a single A4 page entered retrospectively into evidence.

Matilda successfully facilitated for a blind client to achieve a highly successful settlement with a Government agency before the Human Rights Commission on the basis of discrimination & had published (unedited) an extensive letter to the Alternative Law Journal on the inadequacies of the South Australian Whistleblower Protection Act. The letter had to pass the scrutiny & approval of a large panel of legal professionals at Flinder’s University before publication.

Matilda was excited to help galvanize South Australians after she became a victim of a malicious and fraudulent persecution campaign by the NDIS Quality and Safeguards Commission (NQSC) and the Health and Community Services Complaints Commission (HCSCC) for upholding the human rights of her most vulnerable and disabled clients to make informed choices about their medical treatments and bodily autonomy. In so doing, Matilda has exposed horrifically unethical conduct and malfeasance in the operations of both government agencies.