How to capture a state: lessons from PwC and the fossil fuel giants
State capture enables powerful firms to strongly influence government policy. But as PwC found out, don't confuse yourself with what you've captured.
PwC’s ‘once-in-a-generation PR disaster’: most Australians want contract bans
Four in five respondents to a new survey believed PwC should be banned from any new government work.
Parliament to demand that PwC name 63 staff caught up in tax leak
Parliament will demand that PwC name the 63 partners and staff caught up in the firm’s tax leaks scandal, as senators investigating the breach of confidentiality rules put pressure on the Australian Federal Police to explain why they did not pursue the matter as far back as 2018.
The Senate’s Finance and Public Administration Committee is expected to recommend the firm make public the list of names in an interim report to be released on Wednesday.
The demand will be included in a Senate report released on Wednesday. Luis Enrique Ascui
The list includes the names of 63 current and former partners and staff who received at least one email based on confidential information from the federal Treasury, including advice to clients on how to sidestep new multinational tax avoidance laws relying on leaked intelligence from disgraced tax partner Peter Collins. It has some crossover with the list of 36 PwC staffers that Greens senator Barbara Pocock attempted to table publicly during a parliamentary hearing last month.
Members of the committee were finalising recommendations focused on PwC and the AFP on Tuesday afternoon, with the report due to be released during Wednesday’s sitting of parliament. The Greens are understood to have pushed for the recommendation for the firm to name the 63 people.
The firm maintains that this group were not aware the emails were based on confidential information and should not be publicly identified.
It was revealed last month the Australian Taxation Office shared information with the AFP as far back as 2018 about Mr Collins leaking confidential Treasury documents.
Receiving only a “representative sample documents” for assessment, the AFP said it decided to take no further action. The matter was closed in 2019.
Later, in July 2020, the ATO formally referred the matter to the Tax Practitioners Board, which investigates conduct of members of the tax profession.
As a result, Mr Collins – who signed his first confidentiality agreement with Treasury in 2013 – continued to act as an adviser to Treasury on plans for new anti avoidance laws.
Mr Collins signed a third confidentiality agreement on February 19, 2018 – at a time when the ATO had already obtained the emails detailing his breach of confidentiality.
Secretary to the Treasury Steven Kennedy in May referred the PwC matter to the AFP.
Senate orders Chalmers
The Senate separately voted on Tuesday to require Treasurer Jim Chalmers to make public documents detailing historic communications between the ATO and the AFP by June 28.
A motion requiring the documents to be presented to the upper house covers all correspondence, file notes, briefing materials and communications dating back to January 2016. The motion was passed with the support of the Coalition and the Greens, despite Labor warning against the move.
Emails, notes and other correspondence dating back to 2018 and information about the decision that “there was insufficient information to refer the PwC tax scandal to an Australian Federal Police investigation” are also covered by the vote.
Labor senator Anthony Chisholm said the government was deeply concerned about the conduct of PwC but the documents sought by the motion had “the potential to prejudice the AFP’s assessment” of the tax leaks and subsequent legal action.
“It is not in the public interest for this motion to succeed,” he said, urging senators to “carefully consider the consequences of ordering documents that relate to a police referral”.
The saga has spread beyond federal parliament. A NSW parliamentary inquiry into the state government’s use of management and consulting services is expected to hear from acting PwC boss Kristin Stubbins on June 26.
Health industry partner Nathan Schlesinger and consulting risk and quality leader Niamh Scanlon are also expected to appear at the hearing in Sydney.
