Former SA senator Rex Patrick on Wednesday launched the fund amid growing calls to drop the prosecution of Richard Boyle, as well as David McBride, who exposed allegations of war crimes committed by Australian soldiers in Afghanistan.

“Whistleblowers have been brave enough to call out wrongdoing – exposing corporate fraud and dodgy government deals, misfeasance, corruption and even war crimes,” Patrick said.

“But the federal Labor government is shamefully continuing with the Coalition-era political persecution of whistleblowers.”

Independent MP and former journalist Zoe Daniel said Boyle was “suffering from persecution by prosecution”.

Daniel said he was being dragged through the courts, had his finances destroyed and his mental health deteriorated simply for telling the truth.

“The Australian Tax Office has admitted that the tactics that Boyle had the courage to call out were grievously wrong,” she said.

“This scandal also demonstrates that existing whistleblower laws, afford no real protection for those with the courage to call out corruption and wrongdoing.”

Daniel called for the attorney-general to enhance whistleblower protections, pointing to his promise to strengthen the regime before the anti-corruption commission came into operation in the middle of the year.

“Where is it?” she said.

“The Boyle case will discourage other whistleblowers from coming forward in the public interest and is yet another reminder of the urgent need for a properly funded whistleblower protection authority or, at the very least, a whistleblower commissioner.”

McBride is set to face a criminal trial in November charged with unlawfully disclosing sensitive information.

A subsequent investigation stemming from his revelations found credible evidence of war crimes by Australian special forces in Afghanistan, and one man has since been charged with the war crime of murder.

Patrick said it was a strong message from the government for people to not blow the whistle.

“Australia is on track to have our first person jailed for war crimes in Afghanistan and outrageously it’s not a perpetrator (but) rather the person who helped expose it,” he said.

“The attorney-general has made big statements and promises about protecting whistleblowers … (he) has the power to right these wrongs and end these prosecutions, but he has failed to act.”

The justice fund will help run an intense campaign to back the two whistleblowers and continue to call on the government to drop the prosecutions.

-with AAP