Cassaniti saga: Coloured pens, allegedly rushed consent: ATO record keeper ordered to appear in court

ATO staff offered pay cut in APSC push to increase work hours

Nine extra minutes per day are proposed for agencies below the current standard threshold. One set of ordinary hours to rule them all.

Tens of thousands of public servants at the Australian Taxation Office and several other federal agencies could be required to work longer hours without specific compensation under a bid by the Australian Public Service Commission to standardise the length of the public service working day.

In the most audacious move by the APSC in the current bargaining round so far, the public service’s workplace enforcer has lobbed a new “common condition” across the entire public service that proposes to extend the working days of employees of agencies who now have daily hours below the majority threshold of seven hours and 30 minutes.

“Currently, around 80% of agencies have ordinary working hours of seven hours, 30 minutes per day,” the APSC’s preliminary Commonwealth position on APS working hours, released on Monday and obtained by The Mandarin, states.

“The chief negotiator is proposing to make seven hours and 30 minutes the standard working hours for all agencies, impacting approximately 20% of agencies. These proposed changes will impact each agency differently.

“Agencies currently with working hours above or below seven hours and 30 minutes will be required to adjust to the new common standard in their next enterprise agreement.”

While most of the APS uses the 7.5-hour working day definition, the Australian Taxation Office retains a seven-hour, 21-minute workday. So do the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, Geoscience Australia, the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation, the Australian Pesticides and Veterinary Medicines Authority and the Australian Skills Quality Authority.

The ATO will easily be the biggest and hardest battleground for the APSC to try and get any increase in working hours from public servants without commensurate compensation, especially with the Australian Services Union Taxation Officer’s Branch bringing an audit lens and hard numbers to any fuzzy language.

“The APSC is proposing a common condition of a seven-hour, 30-minute day across the APS, with no exceptions. The ATO has a seven-hour, 21-minute day. This is equivalent to taking one week of leave for all ATO staff,” branch secretary Jeff Lapidos told The Mandarin.

“The ATO also wants to prevent any early shutdown by any APS agency on the last business day before Christmas. The ATO closes at 12.00 on the last business day before Christmas.”

The proposed increase in hours at the ATO could also sink a ‘yes’ vote for any new EBA, potentially excluding agency-specific wage talks if they are declared intractable and sent to arbitration.

Part of the problem APS leaders and the APSC face is that the combined front to achieve uniform, service-wide agreements and wage deals suits some APS employees and unions far better than others, especially where there is a market premium on specialist rather than generalist skills.

However, smaller unions within the APS have little or no hesitation in decoupling from a broader uniform push and taking their chances at arbitration, because of the often large discount compared with labour-discount specialists like lawyers, auditors, scientists, and technology professionals who opt to become public servants.

The Commonwealth’s initial wage offer to its public servants is slated to hit the table on October 13, with offers to agencies bound by determinations, rather than bargaining, already coming in at just 3% a year.

 

Coloured pens, allegedly rushed consent: ATO record keeper ordered to appear in court

TAX 

Questions of alleged coercion and inaccurate records have been raised during a Federal Court hearing against the Commissioner of Taxation. 

21 September 2026 • By  Carlos Tse  

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A director’s release of documents to the Commissioner of Taxation also raised the question of consent at an interlocutory hearing on Thursday, 18 September 2026. 

Justice Cameron Moore ordered a member of the ATO staff to appear for cross-examination to determine whether his record of events was contemporaneous and accurate. 

During the hearing, it emerged that the applicant, Marginata Securities director Thi Linh Trinh, signed a consent form to release documents on 9 September. The court heard this consent form may have been signed under alleged coercion. 

Justice Moore heard that Trinh was given the option to supply certain documents to the commissioner either through an “image option” or a “search option” and was given an opportunity to seek legal representation.

Justice Moore said that Trinh was told words to the effect of: “If you don’t consent to it being imaged, we will be here for days.” 

She was also told words to the effect of: “You can get legal advice… would you like to give [your husband] a call now.” 

Her husband and director of accounting firm Capital Financial Advisory, Sam Peter Cassaniti, was allegedly on his way to the premises at the time.

The applicants’ barrister, David McGovern SC, alleged that Trinh was rushed to sign the consent form before Cassaniti arrived.

The Commissioner of Taxation submitted the notes taken by the ATO employee at the time, which were time-stamped, allegedly provided a play-by-play record of events.

The barrister for the commissioner, Luke Livingston SC, stressed that the employee provided a “precise, comprehensive, and detailed” note of the events.

Despite this, Justice Moore said it was “not a very expansive note”. 

According to the timestamps, Trinh provided consent within 12 minutes, and the employeemerely noted that she was “happy” to sign the consent form.

Different coloured pens

McGovern submitted that in the notes, some further timestamps appeared to have been inserted with a different coloured pen, and questioned the contemporaneousness of the notes due to the use of different pens.

In response, Livingston called McGovern’s claim “tenuous”, asserting that the concept of reasonable doubt should apply to the contemporaneity of the notes.

“It may not be a different pen [colour]; it could be a different pressure,” Livingston said.

The judge found a substantial factual dispute over whether Trinh consented on the day of signing, and because the employee was the only one with a written record of events, the judge ordered that they be cross-examined so the court could determine the notes’ contemporaneity.

Justice Moore listed the next hearing for 30 September 2026, with the employee and five other witnesses set to appear.

The case citation: NSD2344/2025 - Kerrigan Law Pty Ltd (ACN 620 231 432) (Formerly Known as McEvoy Legal Pty Ltd) & Ors v Commissioner of Taxation & Anor 

Kevin Burrowes - Australia’s five most powerful people in consulting for 2026

 

Australia’s five most powerful people in consulting for 2026

AFR Magazine’s hotly anticipated Power issue, out on September 25, includes lists of the key players across five industry sectors. Here are the year’s leading consultants.

What a difference a year makes. Last year, KPMG chief executive Andrew Yates topped The Australian Financial Review Magazine’s consulting power list. Yates had helped the firm win a series of big audits and managed cost well enough to give partners a pay bump.

And then on the evening of March 24, Labor senator Deborah O’Neill stood up in the Senate and, using parliamentary privilege, quoted a whistleblowerwho claimed KPMG audit partners had misused confidential client data and leveraged conflicted relationships to win audit work.

The fallout, and the firm’s botched handling of the matter, has been severe and is ongoing. Yates, along with most of the local leadership, has retired early, new work is proving hard to win, and dozens of partners and hundreds of staff have been cut.

This latest consulting scandal, along with the mixed effect of artificial intelligence on demand, has particularly hit the advisory arms of the big four firms (KPMG, PwC, Deloitte and EY). They are all using the technology to cut costs and create new service offerings, and advising clients on how to do the same. In turn, AI is helping smaller and newly formed firms carry out work that previously could only be done by larger firms. Some clients are using AI in place of consultants.

This year’s most-powerful list is made up of those who have helped their firms thrive in the challenging environment.

1. Peter Burns

The Accenture Australia and New Zealand head has been getting the jump on his consulting rivals by signing up large clients to multi-year outsourcing deals. Burns’ pitch is that Accenture will run back-office operations offshore – marketing, finance, human resources and IT – at a lower cost, allowing the client to cut staff. Accenture profits by using lower-cost offshore staff and improving the client’s business processes.

The firm now runs parts of the back-office operations of household names such as Origin Energy and Coles. The Coles deal, worth an estimated $500 million over five years, involves moving up to 1000 roles offshore. Burns is negotiating a similar deal with Qantas. These deals, along with a flourishing public sector business, helped boost the firm’s most recent local results, for 2024-25. Revenue was up to almost $3 billion and post-tax profit up by 20 per cent to $124  million. That’s a good result in a year when the big four advisory arms all struggled.

2. Said Jahani

Jahani has spent much of his time since being appointed in 2025 as CEO of Grant Thornton Australia negotiating with various private equity outfits vying to buy the local firm. The winning bidder, New Mountain Capital, is already the majority owner of the US-headquartered Grant Thornton Advisors and will add the Australian firm to a global network spanning the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific.

The closely watched transaction – the largest ever in the Australian accounting sector – is a coup for Jahani, who has worked at the firm since 2007. Local Grant Thornton partners will receive a lucrative payday from the deal and the firm’s leaders have a war chest worth hundreds of millions of dollars to buy smaller firms and hire. Jahani has so impressed the firm’s global leaders that he was given the additional role of head of Grant Thornton in the Asia-Pacific region in late August.

3. Kevin Burrowes

Burrowes was originally planning to retire as PwC Australia CEO this year, having completed his epic turnaround job of the once-embattled firm. Then the KPMG audit leaks scandal blew up. PwC’s board looked at the KPMG allegations and quickly realised that it would lead to the government revisiting shelved laws to give ASIC more power to police the mostly unregulated big four. They asked Burrowes to stick around for two more years and partners voted in favour of the move in August.

Burrowes, originally from the United Kingdom, was parachuted in by PwC global from a Singapore-based role to take control of the Australian firm in 2023 after a tax partner was found to have shared confidential government data to win tax work. Initially, he was greeted with fear and loathing by parts of the partnership. But his willingness to move quickly to cut personnel and push through unpopular reforms helped speed up the firm’s recovery. Revenue at the firm is increasing for the first time since the 2023 scandal hit, up more than 6 per cent in the first half of the year.

4. Joanne Gorton

Gorton, the CEO of Deloitte Australia, is another big-four leader who has returned her firm to growth amid difficult market conditions. Revenue at the firm is up slightly to $2.55 billion in 2025-26; the downturn in strategy and risk and deals advisory offset by increased revenue in tax and tech consulting. Her 2030 plan for Deloitte is to emulate Accenture by going big into offshored services and to lower internal costs using AI.

She wants to triple the firm’s managed services arm into a $1 billion business by 2030, offsetting the threat from AI to the advisory business. The thinking is AI will automate one-third of routine consulting tasks, forcing the firm to cut fees by up to 40 per cent. She wants to redeploy, not cut, that 30 per cent of capacity, hence the aim to triple its managed services arm. Under Gorton, an auditor, the firm has also brandished its auditing chops by correctly raising the alarm about the financial accounts of new audit client Corporate Travel Management.

5. Igor Sadimenko

Sadimenko is a driving force behind the hyper-aggressive local expansion of the US-headquartered consulting and turnaround firm Alvarez & Marsal. As head of the firm’s performance improvement service in Australia and New Zealand, he has been busily recruiting and poaching partners from the big four who can sell advisory work and then roll up their sleeves and actually do the work.

The firm has so far recruited more than 70 managing directors with this rare combo of skills, mostly from the big four accounting firms. It also expects to have more than 500 staff by the end of the year. The firm’s quick growth – it only set up locally in 2023 – means Alvarez & Marsal has become a force in the local advisory market. Revenue is expected to hit $180 million when its financial year ends in October as it picks up work once done by the big four and even the strategy firms. The firm is now quickly expanding its service offerings beyond its traditional services of consulting, tax advice and transaction advice.

The AFR Magazine annual Power issue is out on Friday, September 25, inside The Australian Financial Review. Follow AFR Mag on Instagram.

Read more Power 2026

• Australia’s five most powerful property people
• The most powerful Australian technology leaders 
• Australia’s five most powerful people in law
• Australia’s most powerful dealmakers

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MobLand’s second season is pure television crack

 

MobLand’s second season is 

pure television crack

Guy Ritchie directs a stacked cast led by 

Pierce Brosnan and Helen Mirren in a 

soap-opera-meets-gangster franchise with polish.

Terry PontikosTV reviewer

Sep 19, 2026 

MobLand S2, UK, crime-thriller ★★★

• Where to find it: Paramount+
• First aired: September 18
• Who’s in it: Tom Hardy, Pierce Brosnan, Helen Mirren, Paddy Considine, Joanne Froggatt, Anson Boon, Lara Pulver, Mandeep Dhillon, Teddie Allen, Emmett J. Scanlan
• Who made it: created by Ronan Bennett; written by: Jez Butterworth, Esther Watson; directed by: Guy Ritchie, Lawrence Gough
• Time commitment: 10 x 45-49 minute episodes
• How it rates (season 1): IMDb: 8.3/10; Rotten Tomatoes: 77%
• Synopsis: Irish gangsters behaving unbelievably badly

Chalk it up to the luck of the Irish. The Harrigan crime dynasty perfectly embodies this expression, which roughly equates to undeserved success through “dumb luck”. This is one of the most ludicrous crime families on television. A mafia with no need for outside enemies, considering the range of Machiavellian plots occurring inside their Cotswolds stronghold. It’s like Succession with shooters. MobLand is back in all its blood-soaked bastardly and betrayal. Episodes are set for weekly release after a premiere double, with the streamer offering up the first four for review.

The family’s led by dangerous nutter Conrad Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan) and his equally psychotic wife Maeve (Helen Mirren). These two crazed codgers allow Tom Hardy to calmly stride onto centre stage as fixer Harry Da Souza, sorting out their self-inflicted problems. The likes of which remarkably never jeopardised Harrigan supremacy over North London’s criminal underworld – until now. After seeing off rivals, the Stevensons (i.e. mercilessly butchering them all in season one), MobLand’s second season focuses on machinations within the clan, as various players scheme for ascension to Conrad’s throne.

She’s back: Helen Mirren returns as psychotic family matriarch, Maeve Harrigan.  

Murderous violence flares early when a routine meeting with the top brass of an affiliated Turkish gang goes haywire at a greyhound track. Conrad feels disrespect from his opposite’s no-show, triggering a wild gunfight in a private box. Meanwhile, Kevin Harrigan (Paddy Considine) continues to feud with his father while contemplating a move to snatch control of a vast drug empire. As ever, Harry is the chips in the buttie, with loyalties torn between his best pal and career employer.

Harry’s busier than bacteria. At times he babysits five mobiles, a sight to have anyone reaching for the painkillers. His marriage to the mob exacts a destructive toll on his other marriage to Jan (Joanne Froggatt), who’s filing for divorce. Daughter Gina (Teddie Allen) teams with Eddie Harrigan (Anson Boon) in a business shaking down rich YouTubers. Joining the mix is Seraphina (Mandeep Dhillon), Conrad’s daughter by another mother, allying with the shadowy American influence-peddler Kat McAllister (Janet McTeer).

Backed by the clout of a US diplomatic role, Kat’s out to crush the Harrigans in response to Harry’s rejection of her employment offer. Also taking a number is new-age hitman Frank Cooper (Johnny Flynn). He’s been unearthed by corrupt, high-ranking police operative Colin Tattersall (Toby Jones), formerly entrenched within the Stevenson cartel. He wants in, approaching Kat to bring Cooper on board as her incursive spearhead. Meanwhile, Conrad secretly undertakes cognition testing. To nobody’s surprise, he’s discovered to be a hothead displaying poor judgment and rash decision-making.

This season wades directly into a pit of past traumas. There’s Kevin’s vengeful retaliation over his mistreatment at the hands of a prison “screw” decades before. Wife Bella (Lara Pulver), Conrad’s former mistress who bore his child/grandchild Eddie, stitches up her own childhood abuser. Seraphina’s closeness to Conrad earns Maeve’s constant scorn, leading her to take the action of an enemy. Eddie continues to be played by his grand-mum/step-mum. We also lurch into murkier incestuous territory as Maeve continues to express herself inappropriately around him.

MobLand | Season 2 Official Trailer | Paramount+Paramount Plus

Watch on

Created by Ronan Bennett with Guy Ritchie as a director, MobLand made it clear from the start it was less committed to realism or nuance than it was to explosive action, cartoon thuggery and an industrial strength body count. Undoubtedly important to the show’s success is the dream pairing of Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan. The veterans share great chemistry, as evidenced in The Thursday Murder Club, and clearly enjoy inhabiting their dastardly characters. Conrad is an untethered lunatic who’d give the Kray brothers pause for thought in doing business with him. The delightfully demented Maeve is a conniving puppeteer, playing Conrad and Eddie like a pair of sociopathic marionettes.

In a stacked cast Tom Hardy continues to be MobLand’s centrepiece with his quietly menacing mister fixit commanding plenty of screen time. Kevin is more important this season but Paddy Considine is still wasted, spending too long in the background sitting on sofas and scowling in corners. The quiet strength of this season is the inclusion of Johnny Flynn, delivering great humour in the guise of whimsical scooter-riding gun for hire, Frank Cooper. So too, Emmett J. Scanlan as Conrad’s head lackey Paul, who’s always off to the side, comically mumbling cold truths as the family’s madness envelops him.

MobLand is a strange brew. The show suffers from overused genre tropes and plays like a soap opera, with unrealistic scenarios in an over-the-top presentation of cockney crims. Tracking the body count practically calls for an Excel spreadsheet. But the series is also moreish in the same way any soap can be – once viewers have picked sides – and it boasts the action and polish of a top-class gangster franchise. Holding everything together is Hardy. Virtually the only Harrigan hood with the required smarts, Harry is at his most persuasive here, with and without leverage. It’s the gift of the gab – a sure sign that he’s kissed the Blarney Stone.

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Terry Pontikos is an avowed cinephile who in recent years has turned his focus to premium streaming series. He has worked in major media outlets in Sydney and Hong Kong since the early 1990s.