Jozef Imrich, name worthy of Kafka, has his finger on the pulse of any irony of interest and shares his findings to keep you in-the-know with the savviest trend setters and infomaniacs.
''I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.''
-Kurt Vonnegut
The 2024-25 Presidential Transition: Lessons Learned and Recommendations
Center for Presidential Transition Report: “Every presidential transition in modern history has been unique and 2024 was no exception. Although the transition of power from the outgoing Biden administration to the incoming Trump administration was peaceful, it was characterized by significant departures from established norms and set a precedent for future transitions to stray from processes that ensure transparency, ethics and security. Indeed, the new administration’s willingness to deviate from existing norms has continued to characterize its approach to governing throughout its first year.
GO.gov will serve as a single travel management solution
GO.gov will serve as a single travel management solution for all civilian Federal agencies, providing a more intuitive experience for booking federal travel and better access to commercially available features like charge card integration and a mobile interface. GO.gov will start rolling out to agencies in phases, beginning with early adopters in November 2025.
More heat on the beleaguered consultancy firm, with Canberra testing how far oversight can stretch after the fallout of the tax leaks saga.
TOM RAVLIC DEC 4, 2025
The Tax Practitioners Board has confirmed that two of the three PwC Australia staffers cautioned in relation to the tax leaks saga remain employed by the firm.
A TPB response to Australian Greens Senator Barbara Pocock’s question on notice says two recipients of a caution remain in the firm’s tax team.
“PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and other entities that are registered tax practitioners must maintain competent standards and carry out supervisory arrangements with a ‘sufficient number’ of individuals that are registered tax practitioners,” the TPB response says.
“TPB records indicate that two of the three individuals who received a written caution from the TPB remain connected to PwC and form part of their sufficient number.”
Pocock has argued that the government needs power to completely ban an accounting practice from providing services to the government. She has introduced a bill in the Senate to amend the law.
She asked Finance Minister Katy Gallagher in another question on notice, inspired by the PwC saga, if the government could ban a firm indefinitely.
Finance’s response states that ministers won’t be involved in the conduct of procurement processes or direct officials in their conduct, unless a law states otherwise.
“These restrictions on ministerial involvement are to ensure fairness, transparency, and to prevent political interference and potential conflicts of interest,” Finance wrote to Pocock.
“They reflect the Independent Review of Services Australia and the National Disability Insurance Agency Procurement and Contracting conducted by Dr Ian Watt AC in March 2023.”
Another question directed at Finance, Pocock asked if PwC Australia’s six-monthly monitoring reports would be made public.
Finance still has PwC Australia under observation for two more years, and Pocock wanted to ensure there is a public audit trail of PwC’s efforts to comply with its accountability obligations.
Finance agreed.
“Finance considers that each of the six-monthly reports should be publicly released, following its consideration, with the appropriate redaction of any confidential or personal information,” it wrote. “Finance has engaged with PwC on this matter.”
Responses related to questions about the aftermath of PwC Australia’s readmission to the supplier list for government departments also coincide with news that former PwC Australia chief executive officer Tom Seymour has been banned from holding membership of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand for four years and fined $25,000 for his role in the tax leaks saga.
While serving as the local CEO of the global accounting behemoth, Seymour earned more than $4 million a year.
As the bin fire engulfing Corporate Travel becomes existential, scrutiny is ramping up on those involved.
Chairman Ewen Crouch is being chased into lifts, while founder Jamie Pherous is getting papped by The Australian in his plunge pool. CFO James Spence has been dispatched to London for damage control, as its UK CEO Michael Healy is (at least temporarily) gone.
The other player in this mess that has been by Corporate Travel’s side for the entire ride is PwC. The big four consulting firm was its auditor from when it listed in 2010 until last financial year.
That means PwC signed off on years of financial accounts that we now know contained material errors, and which Corporate Travel’s new auditor, Deloitte, found immediately. They relate to revenue recognition(especially in its Europe arm) problems that are so extensive its FY25 annual report is six months late.
It raises the question: if an auditor’s number one duty – to the market and shareholders, not just to clients – is to adequately scrutinise the figures in listed companies’ financials and attest they are a fair reflection of reality, how did PwC miss this?
Unless it didn’t miss it. A paragraph buried on page 38 of Corporate Travel’s financials for its UK arm suggests that perhaps PwC knew there were problems afoot – at least in the 2024 financial year.
It said that Corporate Travel’s directors had agreed with PwC to cap the firm’s liability for damages. That would be for any breach of its duty in relation to that audit to £5 million or five times its fees, whichever was greater.
It went on to make it clear that even then, PwC would only be on the hook for the portion of any loss Corporate Travel suffered that was a “just and equitable” reflection of what it could be responsible for.
Essentially, PwC went to the trouble of getting a guarantee from Corporate Travel’s board that if it signed on the 2024 financials, its liability was limited.
Under UK law, it’s allowed but rarely used, provided it’s disclosed. But past financial reports reveal PwC had never felt the need to get such a guarantee. Nor had it outlined so many assurances for signing off that the company was a going concern.
Which suggests that PwC smelled enough of a rat to get the guarantee. Albeit not enough of one to actually demand the financials be restated, or to otherwise alert authorities or shareholders.
We’re not suggesting it sniffed the extent of the problem that has now been uncovered. While Deloitte flagged the revenue issues, it took forensic accountants from KPMG to identify the fraud and overcharging of clients that Corporate Travel is accused of. Those ones aren’t strictly audit issues.
Still, it’s hard to know what’s worse – if PwC had missed the problem, or that it spotted something, and apparently just tried to protect its own back.
Collateral damage
Either way, this accounting scandal spells pain for PwC. Its local operations have already been gutted by the sale of its lucrative government consulting business, which was forced by the 2023 tax leaks scandal. It was already bleeding clients after decades of being the go-to auditor for blue-chip companies (the biggest names to jump ship being Macquarie and Westpac), and the partners who were largely in charge of the Corporate Travel work – Michael Crowe and Michael Shewan – are currently the leads on other audit files.
Beyond questions that its clients and shareholders will have, it all may also reignite pressure from senators Deborah O’Neill and Barb Pocock and governance experts to improve audit quality.
Many of the issues raised by O’Neill’s 2021 audit inquiry are on display in the Corporate Travel audit. Like firms cashing in on lucrative consulting and tax work from audit clients, for example. It raises questions about firms being incentivised to keep their clients happy, and has been banned in other countries.
A quick look at annual reports show that from 2010 to 2024, PwC raked in more than $4.6 million in fees from Corporate Travel for non-audit work. It includes tax compliance and general consulting advice. In the early 2010s, there were years when the audit fees themselves were worth only 20-30 per cent more than the non-audit work.
It also feeds concerns about lax audit rotation rules, which the big four consulting firms have fought hard to keep. Best practice guidelines recommend rotating auditors at least every 10 years to stop firms forming cosy relationships with clients.
Fourteen years of PwC giving Corporate Travel a clean bill of health and then Deloitte immediately finding issues suggests there’s truth to this.
If that weren’t enough – isn’t it curious timing that Pherous’ company only sought to change its auditor after PwC seems to have raised enough concerns to warrant limiting its liability to damages? Coincidence perhaps.
Welcome to Professional Life, our free weekly newsletter covering the latest news, moves, and partner promotions for consulting and accounting experts. Sign up here to get it direct to your inbox every Wednesday before it appears online.
In this week’s newsletter: KPMG reports its AI cheating matter to Chartered Accountants and the Corporate Travel Management auditing mystery gets even more mystifying. CA ANZ also suspends PwC’s former CEO and releases concerning new sexual harassment data. In addition, I echo Regina George from the (definitive) 2004 movie Mean Girls in a (gentle) plea to Accenture’s global CEO.
In this week’s issue:
Like rowdy students, KPMG professionals are caught cheating on their test papers.
The auditing roundabout of Corporate Travel, PwC, and Deloitte.
Former PwC chief Tom Seymour fined and suspended.
Professional moves: The latest hires and promotions.
A KPMG staff member reported that their laptop had been stolen from the boot of their car. Ryan Stuart
The professional conduct committee of Chartered Accountants ANZ is considering its next action after KPMG Australia disclosed that some auditors used AI to cheat on open-book compliance exams. The misconduct, which occurred in 2023 and 2024, involved staff using KPMG’s internal AI tool to generate exam answers and sharing them in chat groups, Rear Window reported.
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The culprits received formal warnings. KPMG told Rear Window it had not reported the matter to regulators and was not legally obliged to do so.
However, a CA ANZ spokeswoman told me yesterday that a disclosure was made to the professional body in November. CA ANZ tightened its disciplinary processes after criticism of its belated response to an earlier KPMG cheating scandal involving hundreds of personnel.
“Academic integrity, including the improper use of AI, is an ongoing focus for CA ANZ’s Professional Conduct Committee,” the CA ANZ spokeswoman said.
“We regularly remind our members that they are obliged under the By-Laws to notify their professional body of potential offences which could include being the subject of internal disciplinary action by an employer.”
Greens senator Barbara Pocock lashed the firm for having “a knack for taking shortcuts on training and exams”.
“Unethical behaviour like this, on top of past transgressions, is why the Greens introduced a bill to parliament to ban dodgy consultants and contractors from government work,” Pocock said yesterday.
Corporate Travel, PwC and Deloitte: an auditing mystery
The accounting saga engulfing Corporate Travel Management descended into farce on Friday when leaders admitted the company owes £80 million ($162 million) to UK customers who were overcharged. Management also delayed, once again, releasing the company’s 2025 accounts and were unable to say when they would be ready.
When KPMG’s UK’s arm was first called in to examine the books, PwC and Deloitte sources told me that they were unconcerned about it all. At that stage, the issue was presented as a technical disagreement over revenue recognition, a highly judgemental area of auditing, in one part of the business. It seemed like a bit of finger-pointing between largely identical crowds.
It is now clearly a much more serious matter than an auditors’ argument over minutiae, raising a host of questions.
What did Deloitte’s auditors find that led them to raise the alarm so quickly? And why did PwC’s auditors not raise similar concerns during its many years of checking Corporate Travel’s books?
So far, KPMG’s UK arm has told Corporate Travel that it had overcharged customers over three separate financial years, and the firm could not rule out finding more issues.
Investors rely on auditors to independently attest that accounts are a fair reflection of a company’s financial position. Auditors rely on sampling and risk assessment to form a reasonable view, while companies are obligated to provide accurate records for scrutiny.
Auditors argue their role is to be a watchdog, not a bloodhound, when it comes to corporate accounts.
But the PwC auditors involved must be worried about what else KPMG’s forensic accountants are going to find.
This could end up being another disaster for PwC. Post-tax leaks, the firm no longer does government advisory work. What happens if they can’t be trusted to undertake corporate audits?
The professional body suspended his membership, ordered him to pay nearly $25,000 in fines and costs, and revoked his status as a “fellow”.
The decision follows the Tax Practitioners Board ruling that Seymour had failed to act on signsthat secret government information was being shared among partners.
Seymour, who was PwC’s chief executive from March 2020 until the scandal forced him to step down in May 2023, led the firm’s tax division when it became embroiled in a years-long fight with the Australian Taxation Office over overly aggressive advice.
Female accountants and sexual harassment
The rate of sexual harassment experienced by female accountants has fallen to 13 per cent, down from 19 per cent in 2021, a Chartered Accountants ANZ member survey released this week shows.
But the 2025 results, measuring this type of misconduct in the workplace in the previous five years, indicate female accountants are still almost 2.5 times more likely to experience sexual harassment than male accountants.
The CA ANZ findings compare to 2022 data from the Australian Human Rights Commission, which found that 41 per cent of surveyed women experienced sexual harassment in the workplace in the past five years.
The CA ANZ survey included 1026 members in 2025 (547 women) and 1871 in the 2021 survey (920 women).
Women now represent 51 per cent of provisional members, compared to 43 per cent of full members. But as this year’s Top 100 Accounting Firms list shows, women are under-represented at the top level of the profession.
McKinsey has cut about 200 tech jobs and isn’t ruling out additional reductions over the next two years as it ramps up usage of AI, Bloomberg reports.
“We are continually working to make our professional support functions more efficient and effective, including by taking advantage of AI, ” a spokesperson told Bloomberg. No Australian staff were affected by the cuts.
Finally, a public service announcement to Accenture CEO Julie Sweet on behalf of the nearly 800,000 employees at Accenture who have received a new title.
Anthony Lazzoppina, co-founder of geopolitical advisory firm Bondi Partners and investment director at the 1941 Fund, has signed on as PwC’s newest partner, Street Talk writes.
Former Deloitte partner Rita Gatt is joining Protivit Australia as a managing director. Gatt was most recently Deloitte’s national lead partner for regulation, cybersecurity and risk.
Tom Pagram, PwC’s former global AI factory leader, has moved to become Virgin Australia’s inaugural head of artificial intelligence.
AI and the professions
How generative AI is shaping professional services.
Lisa Kozaris, chief innovation and legal solutions officer at Allens, King & Wood Mallesons Chief Executive Partner, Renae Lattey Credit: Bethany Rae Bethany Rae
About 70 per cent, or more than 30, of the 53 surveyed firms reported more non-partner fee-earners, with overall numbers rising more than 5 per cent to almost 18,800 from a year ago. Partner numbers rose by more than 3 per cent to about 4600. These increases occurred even as most of the 53 surveyed firms reported using AI tools.
Allens’ lawyers use a mix of off-the-shelf and in-house AI tools that each specialise in a certain type of legal work, while new tools are constantly tested for potential inclusion in the firm’s AI “tech stack”, said Lisa Kozaris, Allens’ chief innovation and legal solutions officer.
At King & Wood Mallesons, lawyers have access to a range of AI tools, including its internal version of ChatGPT, KWM Chat, Microsoft Copilot, Harvey and Luminance.
The plan, released by Industry Minister Tim Ayres this week, shies away from heavy-handed regulation but warns of tough interventions if employers behave badly.
Tim Ayres’ lunchtime address at the Lowy Institute followed his release of Australia’s National AI Plan. Louise Kennerley
The government says the plan “sets out the steps the government will take to support Australia to build an AI-enabled economy that is more competitive, productive and resilient. It aims to make sure that everyone in Australia benefits from the AI opportunity, across all regions, industries and communities”.
Macdonald writes the plan is “risk averse, fails to even try to quantify the opportunity for Australian business and speaks more about using AI to close health, disability and aged-care service gaps than to increase productivity or economic output”.
He adds it “focuses more on protecting workers’ rights than creating new jobs, lacks any solutions to data-centre developers’ water and renewable energy problems, and has no new carrots to lure private investment required to reinvigorate the economy”.
On a related note, Australian companies lag US companies when it comes to the adoption of paid AI tools, according to spend management platform Weel.
Research by the company shows more than 40 per cent of surveyed companies have adopted paid AI tools, compared to more than 20 per cent of Australian companies. The dataset includes spending information from more than 3500 small- and medium-sized Australian companies.
A regular look at the words and phrases professionals love to use, and what they’re really saying.
Ugly inflation print
Use: Oxford Economics head of economic research Harry Murphy Cruise said the CPI increase to 3.8 per cent was an “ugly inflation print”.
Meaning: “Ugly inflation” refers to prices rising quicker than expected, meaning interest rates may also have to go up. The “print” has various historical meanings, but now typically refers to when an official data point appears on the screen.
What it probably means: Higher inflation may lead to higher interest rates.
The alternative: The aesthetic appeal of numbers is likely subjective and “print” as a term is as archaic for the kids of today as using the computer disk symbol for “save”. Go for simple. Prices are rising faster than expected. This is bad because it could lead to higher interest rates.
