The Australian PwC scandal has sent shockwaves through the nation, and at the heart of this controversy is the role played by Erina-based Senator Deborah O’Neill in bringing the alleged corporate misconduct to light.
This week O’Neill continued her Senate committee work with two days of hearings into the management and integrity of consulting services.
CCN recently interviewed Senator O’Neill on the matter that has, at least in part been played out through her Central Coast based office and home.
O’Neill is no stranger to the workings of Federal Parliamentary committees having sat on committees since she was first elected as Member for Robertson in 2010.
However, it has been her role as Chair and chief inquisitor on the Senate’s Financial committees where the PwC story has played out.
O’Neill initiated a comprehensive inquiry into the financial practices of major corporations, including PwC, through the Senate’s investigative committees in February this year.
The scandal began to unravel when a series of whistleblowers courageously stepped forward under parliamentary privilege afforded them by the parliamentary committees.
O’Neill asked the Tax Practitioners Board about an extremely troubling case in which an employee of PwC inappropriately shared confidential government information that was given to them by the Department of Treasury.
The committee heard that this confidential Commonwealth information was then used to advise the firm’s private clients.
Allegations then surfaced of unethical financial practices, including the manipulation of financial records, tax evasion and conflicts of interest, casting a dark shadow over PwC’s reputation.
O’Neill told CCN: “Mr Peter John Collins (of PwC) had taken that confidential information back to PwC and instead of finding a set of titanium professional walls locking him out from using it, he found a fertile garden of people wanting to jump on board with him and [then] created a product to sell to the largest and richest companies in the world to help them avoid paying their tax in Australia.”
From that moment O’Neill tirelessly sought to shed light on the alleged misconduct within PwC and other powerful entities and in so doing started taking down the veil on the shadowy world of billion-dollar government contracting arrangements.
O’Neill said that committees’ investigative work has spurred commitments from the Albanese government to reign in the outsourcing of work done by consultants.
The repercussions have been swift.
Incredibly, PwC Australia chose to sell its government consulting arm for one dollar to stem the damage to its reputation.
The case has also had global repercussions for the so-called Big Four international accounting companies, questioning the reputation of the once untouchable firms that dominate the increasingly lucrative world of government contracts around the world.
O’Neill’s committee work continues this week in the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration to further the investigations into the management and integrity of consulting services in Australia.
David Abrahams