What was the thinking, for example, in appointing former Macquarie boss Nicholas Moore to chair the body overseeing ASIC at a time when ASIC was investigating Macquarie’s disastrous float of Nuix?
Senate’s consultancy inquiry promises plenty of fallout
Neil ChenowethSenior writerInto every life a little Senate inquiry must fall, as they say, but the latest review into consultancy services comes just after Finance Minister Katie Gallagher confirmed that the government would cut $3 billion over four years from external labour costs.
Much of that would be from consultants. PwC appears the firm most exposed, since its leaks scandal was what prompted Greens senator Barbara Pocock to sponsor the inquiry.
Former assistant treasurer Michael Sukkar says all his ministerial appointments were “highly credentialled and appropriately qualified individuals, determined on merit”. James Brickwood
CEO Tom Seymour will be looking forward to further opportunities to explain how PwC regrets the actions of former partner Peter Collins in leaking government documents and how no one else in the firm was in any way to blame.
The inquiry is also looking at the engagement process, which logically leads to ministerial appointments by former Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and former Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar.
What was the thinking, for example, in appointing former Macquarie boss Nicholas Moore to chair the body overseeing ASIC at a time when ASIC was investigating Macquarie’s disastrous float of Nuix?
Or appointing ex-PwC Legal partner Judy Sullivan to the Tax Practitioners Board in October 2020 and ex-PwC partner Peter Hogan in August 2021, at a time when the Tax Office was taking PwC to court over its legal privilege claims?
Or again, the five-month term of former Liberal senator Nick Minchin as independent reviewer under the Food and Grocery Code, after his three-year appointment in March 2021.
The day before the Minchin announcement Sukkar announced six appointments to the Insolvency Practitioner Registration and Disciplinary committees which are drawn on by ASIC to help register and wrangle wayward liquidators.
Sukkar’s list was mostly heavy hitters – lawyers, finance execs and insolvency heavyweights like Stephen Parbery. When Malcolm Turnbull’s government set this up in 2017 original appointees included Arnold Bloch Leibler maestro Leon Zwier.
Sukkar’s sixth appointment was Damian Mitsch. He’s the CEO of the Australian Dental Association. It’s not his only qualification: before that he was CEO of the Australian Podiatrists Association. And before that he worked with physiotherapists.
It’s not the obvious work history to look for when disciplining liquidators.
Mitsch has an MBA, and when he spoke on a panel for the Australian Veterinary Association in May 2021 his bio noted he had “developed key relationships in the federal parliament and bureaucracy”.
He says he filled in an application form on the Treasury website and asked everyone he knew in Canberra about how to get a board appointment.
But Mitsch had a registration issue closer to home. Since 1994 he had been a director of Ayden Springs, which once operated Edgelea Private Nursing Home in Melbourne.
Mitsch owned half of Ayden Springs through his company, Nursing Home Administration Services (NHAS), but NHAS was deregistered in 1997 after he fell out with the other Ayden shareholder. The two didn’t speak for years.
Yet Mitsch remained a director of Ayden Springs, which each year from 1997 to 2002 reported that NHAS, the company that no longer existed, was still a 50 per cent shareholder. That was what ASIC records still showed in 2021 when Mitsch asked his former partner to deregister Ayden, after his appointment by Sukkar.
Mitsch says he was unaware of what he describes as an oversight in a non-trading company by the other director. But Ayden Springs held funds in a bank account through that time, and Mitsch was aware that he remained a director.
That’s not a problem, according to Sukkar. A spokesman said all appointments he made as a minister were “of highly credentialled and appropriately qualified individuals, determined on merit”. Which explains the number of former and current PwC partners that Sukkar, himself a PwC alumnus, appointed to government bodies.
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