Monday, July 13, 2026

Vale Sam Neil



“His look is urbane & unruffled, a kind of clean living James Mason, but his manner is enthusiastic & boyish, & he often makes a point with an object, as if he’s at a primary school show-and-tell.” - Zoe Williams


Sir Nigel John Dermot "Sam" Neill (14 September 1947 – 13 July 2026) was a New Zealand actor and entrepreneur. His career, which spanned over five decades, included leading roles in both independent films and blockbusters. Considered an "international leading man," he was regarded as one of the most versatile actors of his generation.


Sam Neil, a man who could play everything from warmth to the devil incarnate. A brilliant actor with the range to play both warm father figures and off-kilter freaks in beloved blockbusters and Antipodean horror genre gems.


Sam Neill lived life to the absolute fullest right until the end, making one of his final public appearances surrounded by his “heroes” at a Sydney event.

The actor, who died aged 78 on Monday following a battle with cancer, shared an Instagram post on June 12 at the ARIA Hall of Fame Awards as he celebrated those who have influenced music culture in Australia.


Sam Neill's farm animals have celebrity names: The Graham Norton Show 2016


Vale Sam Neil a true gentleman…  I have seen Sam Neill in the flesh and I tasted his Two Paddocks Pinot Noir 🍷 Memories of meeting friendly Sam at the 99 Acres Bangalow Retreat, a boutique accommodation, in the Byron Bay hinterland during the Byron Writers Festival 

Photos of Neil 

Actor Sam Neill owns Two Paddocks, a highly regarded, organic vineyard operation in New Zealand's Central Otago region. Founded in 1993, the boutique winery specializes in world-class Pinot Noir and Riesling, operating across four distinct estate vineyards: The First Paddock, The Last Chance, The Fusilier, and Red Bank Farm.

On Bluesky platform Trending  


ABC on Bsky: Actor Sam Neill, star of Jurassic Park, dies



A true gentleman’: actors, directors and leaders pay tribute to Sam Neill


From Sam Neill “When the world seems close to pear shaped, When leaders fill you with despair When things look dark and dreary And love seems far too rare - CUDDLE A DUCK [ It works ...]”


Sam Neill’s joyful final appearance with his ‘heroes’ weeks before his death aged 78


Sam Neill was one of the very best guest stars The Simpsons ever had - RIP to a legend


The stark contrast in my emotional reaction to Neill's and Graham's passing testifies to the difference between a person who brings joy to the world and one who does the exact opposite.


‘Wry, laconic’: Tributes at sudden and unexpected death of Sam Neill

Sam Neill, whose career spanned Hollywood blockbusters such as Jurassic Park, Oscar-winning period dramas including The Piano and the hip streaming series Peaky Blinders has died suddenly at the age of 78.

“It is with immense sadness that the whanau [a Maori word denoting extended family] of Sam Neill share the news of his passing on Monday 13th July 2026 in Sydney, Australia. Sam was surrounded by family and passed with the dignity that has characterised his whole life,” his family posted on Instagram.

“The loss was sudden and unexpected but blessed by the fact that Sam remained cancer free. They would like to express their deepest gratitude to the staff at St Vincent’s Private Hospital for their incredible care.

“More details will be shared later, but for now, on behalf of the family, we ask that you respect their privacy as they navigate this immeasurable loss.”

Neill revealed he had been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 2022, but in April this year he announced he was cancer free after undergoing a new form of treatment.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was among the first to post a tribute to Neill, writing: “Sam Neill starred in so many beloved Australian stories and he earned a special place in Australian hearts.

“Wry and dry, thoughtful and laconic, Sam fought illness with the same dignity, humour and conviction that gave strength to his every performance. He will be much mourned and long remembered. May he rest in peace.”

Neill’s acting career spanned six decades, starting in 1975 when he was 28. His first film was called Landfall, which was filmed in New Zealand.

He came to the world’s notice in Gillian Armstrong’s My Brilliant Career in 1979 and 1989’s Dead Calm with Nicole Kidman.

Neill was one of a host of actors and directors who achieved international fame after an explosion of Australian films that began in the late 1970s, a list that includes Paul Hogan, Mel Gibson, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe, Jane Campion, Peter Weir and Gillian Armstrong. His range was remarkable, playing opposite Helena Bonham Carter in the Alan Ayckbourn comedy Sweet Revenge to chopping off Hunter’s finger in The Piano to poking his own eyes out in the sci-fi horror Event Horizon.

His career flourished in the 1980s and 1990s, with award-winning films such as The Hunt for Red October in 1990 and The Piano in 1993.

His biggest films include the Jurassic Parkfranchise, with films released in 1993, 2001 and 2022. He was never nominated for an Oscar despite starring in several Academy Award-winning films. But he has been recognised by the Golden Globes and the Emmys.

Neill had been nominated for a Golden Globe three times and twice for an Emmy. Closer to home, he won top acting awards, including an AACTA Award for best actor in a leading role, and a Silver Logie for best lead actor in a drama.

Born in 1947 in Northern Ireland, Neill emigrated to New Zealand at the age of 7. He was born Nigel Neill, but told interviewers he started to go by Sam because there were too many Nigels at his school.

His family settled in Dunedin on the South Island and he was sent to boarding school in Christchurch. After college, he took the lead in Sleeping Dogs in 1977, the first feature made in New Zealand in more than a decade.

On the small screen, Neill played the malign Chester Campbell in TV’s “Peaky Blinders” and Thomas Jefferson in the four-hour CBS miniseries, “Sally Hemings: an American Tragedy.” On Apple TV+, he was on “Invasion,” playing Oklahoma Sheriff John Bell Tyson, a man late in his career searching for his purpose. In 2024 he starred opposite Annette Bening in the Peacock series “Apples Never Fall.”

Actor beloved in New Zealand as an unassuming celebrity

The actor became known in New Zealand as a modest and unassuming person who didn’t embrace celebrity. On social media, he often posted images of his farm animals, many of them affectionately named after celebrities and friends, like Laura Dern the chicken, Kylie Minogue the duck and Helena Bonham Carter the cow.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon mourned Neill as “one of the greats” in a statement posted to social media.

“He started out when there was barely a film industry to speak of,” Luxon wrote. “For more than fifty years he took New Zealand stories to the world and his talents helped make our film industry into what it is today.”

Neill was also a vintner and under his Two Paddocks brand, he produced pinot noir and riesling wines from his winery in the Central Otago region of New Zealand’s South Island.

His memoir Did I Ever Tell You This? came out in March 2023 and he was awarded a knighthood in recognition of his “outstanding contribution to film,” a title approved by the late Queen Elizabeth II.

“I can’t pretend that the last year hasn’t had its dark moments,” Neill told The Guardian in 2023, referring to his cancer diagnosis and treatment. “But those dark moments throw the light into sharp relief, you know, and have made me grateful for every day and immensely grateful for all my friends.”

He is survived by his four children and eight grandchildren.

With AP

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 is The Australian Financial Review’s investment banking reporter. She covers the people, trends, companies, and transactions moving Australian investment banking and capital markets in the Sydney newsroom. Prior to that, she was a markets reporter writing about hedge funds and the asset management industry. Email Joanne at jo.tran@afr.com



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Australia fines online travel agency eDreams over failure to prominently disclose costs

 

A live radar of the aircraft above you. Tap a blip to see what it is. Enter a postcode, town, or city — anywhere in the world — or use your location, and see the aircraft overhead right now. Tap one to find out what it is. [h/t Tara Calishain]


Where are the Robocalls?  I don’t think I’ve gotten a robocall in several months.  That’s GREAT news.  Are yours down as well?  It may be that the telecoms really are working with law enforcement to shut these down. Remember that calls from outside the US must have a US-based service to transfer these voice over internet calls into the phone system. And they must have a way to display a Caller ID number, and usually must have a phone number for recipients to call back. Obviously this system should be something we can track.  So whoever is working on this, thank you and great work!  And maybe there could be more work done on spam text messages.

 
New BBB study looks at Artificial Intelligence used for customer service
  • Businesses increasingly using it for chats, incoming calls
  • Often unpopular with customers
  • Complaints also note increase in scams using AI
Supreme Court rules President can remove FTC Commissioners at will; also affects other federal regulatory agencies
 

Fraud Studies: Here are links to the studies I’ve written for the Better Business Bureau: puppy fraud, romance fraud; BEC fraud, sweepstakes/lottery fraud,  tech support fraud, romance fraud money mules, crooked movers, government imposters, online vehicle sale scams, rental fraud, gift cards,  free trial offer frauds,  job scams,  online shopping fraud,  fake check fraud and crypto scams
 
Fraud News Around the worldHumorFTC and CFPBBenefit TheftBitcoin and Crypto FraudRansomware and data breachesIRS and tax fraudJamaica and Lottery FraudRomance Fraud and Sextortion 
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The world’s most, and least, liveable cities in 2026

 “The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.”

-- Carl Sagan, Cosmos


World's most-liveable cities as usual are in Scandinavia and German-speaking Europe.

Second best are in Australia, New Zealand, Japan US continues to trail Canadian cities, with only Honolulu close. Worst of all is Damascus.

The world’s most, and least, liveable cities in 2026 


See how 173 cities compare in EIU’s annual ranking

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Sunday, July 12, 2026

Inside Project Magenta: How Allens gave KPMG a pass on leaks

The Full KPMG Australia Scandal Timeline

 


A complete chronology of the KPMG Australia audit scandal, from whistleblower allegations and client confidentiality breaches to resignations, regulatory scrutiny and client fallout …

CLAUDINE CASSAR
JUL 06, 2026

Inside Project Magenta: How Allens gave KPMG a pass on leaks

The top-tier law firm cleared KPMG of partner misconduct without interviewing a single outsider and using a literal reading of the allegations that have since engulfed the company.


 and 
The calendar invite was unambiguous: “WBC- Eileen sharing EY/PWC feedback from Lendlease tender.”
For half an hour on October 10, 2023, seven people from KPMG’s $365 million audit business gathered for the purpose of helping Kim Lawry, the partner leading the bid for Westpac’s $32 million audit.
Eileen Hoggett, the lead partner on the Lendlease audit, was there to share how the construction giant’s board had evaluated pitches from two of the firm’s big rivals, EY and PwC.
While Westpac and Lendlease operate in different industries, they shared a board member in Michael Ullmer, himself a KPMG alumnus; a fact not lost on the bid team looking for any competitive insight.
Towards the end of the meeting, Paul Rogers, another senior partner on the Lendlease audit, accessed his client’s internal system, and sharing his screen, displayed a document evaluating how Lendlease scored the tender pitches. There were areas Lawry might want to think about in shaping her bid.
“The line between sharing ‘knowhow’ and experience between KPMG teams (a legitimate and necessary process to provide excellent client service and help develop KPMG partners and employees) and the sharing of client confidential information can be a difficult one to draw,” the law firm, Allens, would write in its summary about what happened at this meeting, two years later.
Allens had been brought in to investigate whether this meeting breached the auditors’ legal and ethical obligations to keep client information confidential.
By then, a former KPMG executive-turned-whistleblower had been alleging for more than a year that auditors at the firm had misused client data, including that the Lendlease documents being improperly used to support the Westpac bid were “weaponised to give the firm an improper commercial advantage”.
The details of the Allens report – codenamed Project Magenta and disclosed to AFR Weekend – confirms the obvious: the Lendlease document was confidential and “should not have been shared on screen (or at all) with the Westpac audit tender team”.
But that didn’t stop Allens finding the whistleblower’s allegation was “not substantiated” on the grounds the Westpac bid team didn’t use the information; Lawry placed “little value” on whatever she saw and didn’t “absorb” it, so there was no commercial advantage.
In accounting-speak, Allens gave KPMG a pass by arguing the confidential information was not material. The problem is: there is no exception for materiality in the profession’s ethical rules around confidentiality. It appears to be a clear breach, but one that was not spelt out in the Allens report.
In addition, Allens found “no evidence” that Lendlease information was shared more widely, as the whistleblower alleged.
But Allens did not look for evidence. It simply took KPMG’s senior leaders at their word.
“Based on our conversations with Ms Hoggett, Mr Rogers and Ms Lawry, their positions of responsibility, authority and accountability as the lead partners for the Lendlease audit and Westpac audit tender respectively, and our findings as to their credibility, we concluded it was not necessary or proportionate to interview members of their teams or to ascertain the recollections of others who attended the meeting,” the Allens report says.
This report – which KPMG used to defend itself but fought to keep private – raises questions about the utility of external, yet non-independent, reviews. Allens did what it was asked, checked if the conduct matched the whistleblower’s allegations word for word, a framing that allowed absolution. But it did not go further and ask if what KPMG did was right.
What would have happened if Allens had clearly stated back in December 2025 that KPMG partners had breached, if not a legal, but an ethical duty? Would that have forced the firm, or its independent directors, to do something before senator Deborah O’Neill stood up in the Senate three months later and made public a scandal that has engulfed the firm?
The line between sharing know-how and breaching client confidentiality may indeed be a difficult one to draw. But it becomes impossibly difficult if you don’t look for the ink.
The Allens investigation kicked off on September 9, 2025 and the firm handed its 60-plus page report to a KPMG board subcommittee, including three independent directors, on December 12.
It was the third external probe and commissioned despite KPMG’s disciplinary committee already knowing enough about the Lendlease allegations to have recommended fines for Hoggett, Rogers and Lawry.
But behind the scenes, a shadow war had gone on about these sanctions. The firm’s “employee relations conduct panel” – comprising head of people Dorothy Hisgrove, general counsel Louise Capon and chief risk officer Paul Low – ruled “around July 2025” that there was enough information about the Lendlease matter to sanction the three partners, according to parliamentary testimony from Hisgrove.
The trio recommended fines of $78,000 for Hoggett, $38,000 for Lawry, $22,000 for Rogers and $38,000 for Lawry. Hoggett earned more than $1.5 million in 2025-26, Lawry more than $1 million and Rogers more than $500,000, according to a document reported upon by The Saturday Paper.

Normally, these recommendations are acted upon immediately. Not this time. Yates argued against the sanctions.

 Separately, the board was also unhappy with how the firm’s leadership had been handling the matter. Then-independent director Mike Baird forced the firm to conduct another investigation. At the time, they were not aware sanctions had already been proposed. He left the board before Allens kicked off its probe.
Then, it all became too late and too public. On March 24, O’Neill detailed the whistleblower’s allegations in the Senate, claiming the firm’s auditors misused client data from some of the country’s biggest companies – including Lendlease, Dexus and Optus – to win auditing work.

KPMG was quick to react. The following morning, Michael Ebeid, an independent director who had read the contents of the Allens report, criticised O’Neill’s speech as “completely wrong” in an email to deputy chair Carmel Mortell and others. The same day, then-KPMG chief executive Andrew Yates and chairman Martin Sheppard said publicly the firm had “been unable to substantiate any claims of wrongdoing raised with us”.
A little over a fortnight later, on April 9, Hoggett, Rogers and Lawry all received their fines over what happened at the October 10, 2023 meeting. Yates stepped in to halve the recommended fines for Hoggett and Lawry.
It was only about this time that KPMG informed regulators about the allegations. Those probes are ongoing.
Six weeks later, Yates and audit boss Julian McPherson resigned and admitted that all the investigations until then, including the Allens investigation, had been inadequate. The firm, a long-term adviser to KPMG, is now running a fresh probe.

Sheppard, Hoggett and Rogers have resigned, Ebeid is KPMG’s new chairman and Mortell remains in charge of the investigation. Lawry remains the lead partner on the Westpac audit, which KPMG won five months after that fateful meeting.

The findings about the October 2023 meeting are a clear illustration of the tenor of Project Magenta.

Most telling is the list of who Allens questioned. All 14 interviews were of KPMG partners or directors. Twelve, including Yates and McPherson, were interviewed for just 30 minutes each, and Hoggett and Rogers were questioned for an hour. Sheppard wasn’t interviewed at all. Allens never reviewed mail boxes or other digital channels, interviewed junior staff members, or spoke to affected clients. The firm said a lack of detail from the whistleblower made it difficult to know who to talk to, but then did not speak to named individuals.
The whistleblower was not interviewed because he remained in a legal stand-off with KPMG over legal protections for his disclosures.
In any event, KPMG’s board subcommittee had the final say over what was probed and how. “The subcommittee will approve the scope and approach to the investigation. Our role will be strictly confined to that scope and adopt the approved approach,” Allens notes in the report.

In KPMG’s defence, it has never said Allens’ work was independent. It has instead studiously used the phrase “external investigation”, relying on the fact that a long history of companies commissioning “independent” probes to look into misconduct means most members of the public would conflate the two.

Another example of Allens’ light-touch approach related to the whistleblower’s allegations about the pursuit of another audit target. When Julian McPherson, then the head of audit, heard Telstra was putting its $14.5 million a year audit out to tender in December 2023, he called Malcolm Ramsay, the lead partner on Singtel Optus in Singapore.

McPherson wanted to ensure Ramsay told Singtel Optus that, if the firm won Telstra, there would be a separate KPMG team “with ethical dividers in place”. McPherson’s Telstra pitch team then started learning about the sector from the ground up, including pumping the KPMG team at Singtel Optus for information about all aspects of their work and attending a “Telco 101” briefing.
The whistleblower claimed this conduct breached ethical rules, which Allens found was “not substantiated”.
The KPMG director on the Singtel Optus audit told Allens he “shared basic industry insights such as how, operationally, telephone calls are processed” and provided feedback on the Telstra team’s approach for the audit, but didn’t share anything about his client that wasn’t publicly available. Another KPMG partner on the Optus audit also sat on a “challenge” panel where he assessed a dry run of KPMG’s pitch for the Telstra work.
The law firm, without ever asking anyone from Singtel Optus or accessing documents or emails, said it could not find evidence confidential Optus information had been shared. Nor could it find any evidence the company had directed its auditors at KPMG “not to engage in any way” with the Telstra pitch team.
Six month later, on June 19 Yates told a parliamentary hearing that he resigned over the Optus-Telstra allegations. “I realised that there were things here that could have been found earlier,” Yates told parliament. In that same hearing, Sheppard admitted that embedded within the KPMG documents about its Optus auditing work was information relating to the telco that “was unredacted”.
It was as the whistleblower had alleged. KPMG had shared confidential Optus information with the team bidding for Telstra.
Allens also examined other allegations related to the firm’s pitch for Telstra. The law firm concluded – after asking three partners – that there was no evidence that KPMG partners had covertly recorded confidential conversations, including with a Telstra executive. It also found that KPMG consultants briefed the audit team on “context” for its pitch was OK because the telco would have been aware such information would be shared. This is despite Allens never asking Telstra this and strict rules about firms’ consulting and auditing arms not discussing clients. According to Allens, there were no issues with Yates taking his family to a P!nk concert, courtesy of Telstra chief executive Vicki Brady, while KPMG was bidding for the audit.
The lawyers also dismissed concerns that Yates had used his personal relationship with Dexus’ then-chief executive Darren Steinberg to get inside information about how KPMG’s pitch for his company’s audit was going.
The pair were friends and regularly played golf, Yates said, but he had not discussed anything that KPMG didn’t already know about the tender.


On April 30, KPMG provided a summary of the Allens report to the parliamentary committee looking into the scandal. That 11-page document features a table showing all allegations are “not substantiated” or did not “contain sufficient information to enable further investigation”.

The underlying Allens report makes it clear that the law firm, despite its minimal effort, had found several events alleged by the whistleblower did, in fact, take place. But it downplayed whether these amounted to wrongdoing by being overly literal against the exact wording of the allegations. Governance expert Helen Bird says these sorts of external inquiries are a “classic crisis management response” for companies facing a scandal, but their value and independence are ultimately limited by the fact the firm under investigation is also footing the bill.

“Findings need to be read in the light that the firm commissioning them pays the bill and often has a pre-existing relationship with them,” she says.
“In the KPMG/Allens report, you’ve also got a very long-standing relationship where KPMG is a client of Allens, and probably quite a valuable one … they have an ongoing interdependency.”
That the lawyers didn’t interview anyone outside KPMG, track down documentary evidence and drew inferences about the reliability of witness statements based on their authority within the firm further diminished the report, she said.

But these reports are not meant to be “subject to critical analysis” as companies fight to keep them private. Rather, Bird said, “they’re a form of insurance” should a crisis unfold. It means there can be issues in how extensive or appropriate the scopes and means of investigations are, but these rarely come to light.
Except, it’s since turned out, for this one. The Project Magenta report has now been supplied to the parliamentary committee investigating the whistleblower claims. No doubt they will have questions. Perhaps magenta, a colour that is an optical illusion, is a fitting alias for an investigation where lawyers create the illusion of a conclusion, manufacturing a comforting reality out of what they chose to see, while blinding themselves to the truth in between.


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